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THE NEW NEGRO

AN INTERPRETATION

EDITED BT ALAIN LOCKE

BOOK

DECODATION

AND

PORTTDAITr

WINOLD

DEI^

ALBERTANDCHARLE/ BONI

NEWYORK

1925

■vn

Published, December, 1925
Second printing, March, 1927

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Printed in the 'United States of America

This Volume
Is Dedicated
To THE

YOUNGER GENERATION

O, rise, shine for Thy Light is a’ com-ing.

(Traditional.)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due and acknowledgment made by the Editor and Pub¬
lishers for the kind permission of the authors and publishers listed
for the use of copyright material in the preparation of this volume.
Especial acknowledgment is made to the Survey Associates and the
Editors of the Survey Graphic for the assignment of the material of the
Harlem Number, March, 1925, of Survey Graf hie, the bulk of which,
with much additional new material, has been incorporated.

The Atlantic Monthly Co.: The City of Refuge y by Rudolph Fisher.
Boni and Liveright: Carma and Fern and two poems from Cane, by
Jean Toomer.

Harcourt, Brace & Co.: Baftism and the Harlem Dancer from “Har¬
lem Shadows”, by Claude McKay, and Creation from “The Book of
American Negro Verse”, by James W. Johnson.

G. Schirmer Co.: for the text and music of Father Abraham from
“Afro-American Folk Songs”, by H. E. Krehbiel, and Listen to the
Lambs from “Negro Folk Songs”, by Nathalie Curtis Burlin.

The New Age: the Balm Porchy by Eric Walrond.

The Survey and Harper Bros.: Seven Poems of Harlem Life and
Heritage from “Color”, by Countee Cullen.

Vanity Fair: for Drawings, by Miguel Covarrubias.

The Barnes Foundation: for reproductions of African Art objects.
Foreign Affairs: for Color Worlds , by W. E. B. Du Bois.

The Crisis: for The Negro in American Literature , by Wm. Stanley
Braithwaite; Jaxxoniay by Langston Hughes, Escafe by Georgia D.
Johnson.

The Brimmer Co.: for two Poems from “Bronze”, by Georgia Doug¬
las Johnson.

The Liberator: for Negro Dancer sy by Claude McKay.

The Bookman: To a Brown Boyy by Countee Cullen.

Harper’s Magazine: Fruit of the Flower , by Countee Cullen.
Opportunity: Fogy by John Matheus; S funky by Zora Hurston; Black
Finger , by Angelina Grimke, Riddle by Georgia D. Johnson.
Survey Graphic and Alfred A. Knopf: for five poems from “ The
Weary Blues” y by Langston Hughes.

Survey Graphic: for Tuskegee} Hamfton and Points North , by Robert
R. Moton.

Winold Reiss: for his series of Negro Portrait Studies.

• •

Vll

This volume aims to document the New Negro culturally
and socially, — to register the transformations of the inner and
outer life of the Negro in America that have so significantly
taken place in the last few years. There is ample evidence
of a New Negro in the latest phases of social change and prog¬
ress, but still more in the internal world of the Negro mind
and spirit. Here in the very heart of the folk-spirit are the
essential forces, and folk interpretation is truly vital and rep¬
resentative only in terms of these. Of all the voluminous
literature on the Negro, so much is mere external view and
commentary that we may warrantably say that nine-tenths of
it is about the Negro rather than of him, so that it is the Negro
problem rather than the Negro that is known and mooted in
the general mind. We turn therefore in the other direction
to the elements of truest social portraiture, and discover in the
artistic self-expression of the Negro to-day a new figure on
the national canvas and a new force in the foreground of
affairs. Whoever wishes to see the Negro in his essential traits,
in the full perspective of his achievement and possibilities,
must seek the enlightenment of that self-portraiture which
the present developments of Negro culture are offering. In
these pages, without ignoring either the fact that there are
important interactions between the national and the race life, or
that the attitude of America toward the Negro is as important
a factor as the attitude of the Negro toward America, we have
nevertheless concentrated upon self-expression and the forces
and motives of self-determination. So far as he is culturally

(articulate, we shall let the Negro speak for himself.

Yet the New Negro must be seen in the perspective of a
New World, and especially of a New America. Europe seeth¬
ing in a dozen centers with emergent nationalities, Palestine
full of renascent Judaism — these are no more alive with the

FOREWORD

progressive forces of our era than the quickened centers of the
lives of black folk. America seeking a new spiritual expansion
and artistic maturity, trying to found an American literature,
a national art, and national music implies a Negro- American
culture seeking the same satisfactions and objectives. Separate
as it may be in color and substance, the culture of the Negro
is of a pattern integral with the times and with its cultural
setting. The achievements of the present generation have
eventually made this apparent. Liberal minds to-day cannot
be asked to peer with sympathetic curiosity into the darkened
Ghetto of a segregated race life. That was yesterday. Nor
must they expect to find a mind and soul bizarre and alien as
the mind of a savage, or even as naive and refreshing as the
mind of the peasant or the child. That too was yesterday,
and the day before. Now that there is cultural adolescence
and the approach to maturity, — there has come a development
that makes these phases of Negro life only an interesting and
significant segment of the general American scene.

Until recently, except for occasional discoveries of isolated
talent here and there, the main stream of this development
has run in the special channels of “race literature” and “race
journalism.” Particularly as a literary movement, it has grad¬
ually gathered momentum in the effort and output of such
progressive race periodicals as the Crisis under the editorship
of Dr. Du Bois and more lately, through the quickening en¬
couragement of Charles Johnson, in the brilliant pages of
Opportunity , a Journal of Negro Life. But more and more
the creative talents of the race have been taken up into the
general journalistic, literary and artistic agencies, as the wide
range of the acknowledgments of the material here collected
will in itself be sufficient to demonstrate. Recently in a project
of The Survey Graphic , whose Harlem Number of March,
1925, has been taken by kind permission as the nucleus of
this book, the whole movement was presented as it is epitomized
in the progressive Negro community of the American metrop¬
olis. Enlarging this stage we are now presenting the New
Negro in a national and even international scope. Although
there are few centers that can be pointed out approximating

FOREWORD

Harlem’s significance, the full significance of that even is a
racial awakening on a national and perhaps even a world scale.

That is why our comparison is taken with those nascent
movements of folk-expression and self-determination which
are playing a creative part in the world to-day. The galvaniz¬
ing shocks and reactions of the last few years are making by
subtle processes of internal reorganization a race out of its own
disunited and apathetic elements. A race experience penetrated
in this way invariably flowers. As in India, in China, in Egypt,
Ireland, Russia, Bohemia, Palestine and Mexico, we are wit¬
nessing the resurgence of a people: it has aptly been said, —
“For all who read the signs aright, such a dramatic flowering
of a new race-spirit is taking place close at home — among
American Negroes.”

Negro life is not only establishing new contacts and found¬
ing new centers, it is finding a new soul. There is a fresh
spiritual and cultural focusing. We have, as the heralding
sign, an unusual outburst of creative expression. There is a
renewed race-spirit that consciously and proudly sets itself
apart. Justifiably then, we speak of the offerings of this book
embodying these ripening forces as culled from the first fruits
of the Negro Renaissance.

Alain Locke.

Washington, D. C.

November, IQ25.

Foreword

PAGE

Part I: The Negro Renaissance

The New Negro ....

Alain Locke .

Negro Art and America

Albert C. Barnes .

The Negro in American

Litera-

ture .

William Stanley Braith-

waite ....

Negro Youth Speaks

Alain Locke .

fiction :

The City of Refuge

Rudolph Fisher

Vestiges ....

Rudolph Fisher

Fog .

John Matheus

Carma, from Cane

Jean Toomer .

Fern, from Cane

Jean Toomer .

Spunk .

Zora Neale Hurston .

105

Sahdji .

Bruce Nugent

113

The Palm Porch

Eric Walrond

“5

poetry:

Poems .

Countee Cullen

129

Poems .

Claude McKay

J33

Poems .

Jean Toomer .

136

The Creation

James Weldon Johnson

138

Poems .

Langston Hughes .

141

The Day-Breakers

Arna Bontemps

145

Poems ....

Georgia Johnson .

146

Lady, Lady

Anne Spencer

148

The Black Finger .

A ngelina Grimke

148

Enchantment

Lewis Alexander .

149

XIV

CONTENTS

PAGE

drama:

The Drama of Negro Life

Montgomery Gregory

153

The Gift of Laughter

Jessie Fauset .

161

Compromise (A Folk Play)

Willis Richardson

168

music:

The Negro Spirituals .

Alain To eke .

199

Negro Dancers

Claude McKay

214

Jazz at Home

J. A. Rogers .

216

Song .

Gwendolyn B. Bennett

225

Jazzonia .

Langston Hughes

226

Nude Young Dancer .

Langston Hughes

227

The Negro Digs up His Past

American Negro Folk Litera-

Arthur A. Schomburg 23 1

ture .

Arthur Huff Fauset .

238

T’appin .

Told by Cugo Lewis

245

B’rer Rabbit Fools Buzzard .

• • • • • •

248

Heritage .

The Legacy of the Ancestral

Countee Cullen .

250

Arts .

Alain Locke .

254

Part II: The New Negro

in a New World

The Negro Pioneers ....

Paul U. Kellogg

271

The New Frontage on American

Life .

Charles S. Johnson

The Road .

Helene Johnson

3°o

The New Scene:

Harlem: the Culture Capital .
Howard: The National Negro

James Weldon Johnson

301

University .

Hampton-T uskegee : Missioners

Kelly Miller .

312

of the Masses ....

Robert R. Moton

323

CONTENTS

Durham: Capital of the Black

Middle Class ... E. Franklin Frazier .

Gift of the Black Tropics . W. A. Domingo .

The Negro and the American Tradition

The Negro’s Americanism
The Paradox of Color
The Task of Negro Woman¬
hood .

Melville J . Herskovits
Walter White

Elise Johnson McDou -
gald

Worlds of Color:

The Negro Mind Reaches Out W. E. B. DuBois

Bibliography

Who’s Who of the Contributors .

A Selected List of Negro Americana and Africana .

The Negro in Literature .

Negro Drama .

Negro Music .

Negro Folk Lore .

The Negro Race Problems .

PACE

333

34i

353 .
361

369

385

4i5

421

427

432

434

442

449

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover design and book decorations by Winold Reiss

Drawings by Winold Reiss

The Brown Madonna .

•

Frontispiece

Portrait Sketch: Alain Locke .... facing page

Portrait: Jean Toomer .

IOO

Portrait: Countee Cullen .

132

Study: Paul Robeson as “Emperor Jones”

166

Portrait: Roland Hayes .

208

African Phantasie: Awakening ....

232

Type Sketch: “Ancestral” .

242

Portrait: Charles S. Johnson ....

278

Portrait: James Weldon Johnson

306

Portrait: Robert Russa Moton ....

324

Type Sketch: “From the Tropic Isles” .

342

Portrait Sketch: Elise Johnson McDougald

370

Portrait: Mary McLeod Bethune

378

Portrait: W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

386

Type Sketch: “The Librarian”

394

Type Sketch: “The School Teachers” .

* * * * *

410

Drawings and Decorative Designs by Aaron Douglas

Meditation .

•

page

Rebirth .

Sahdji .

1 1 2

The Poet .

128

The Sun-God .

138

“Emperor Jones” .

152

“Roll, Jordan, Roll” .

196

“And the Stars began to Fall” .

198

xvii

XV111

1LLUSTRA TIONS

Music .

The Spirit of Africa
“From the New World” .

W. V. Ruckterschell:

Young Negro .

Drawings by Miguel Covarrubias

Jazz .

Blues Singer

page 216
“ 228
“ 270

'page 225
“ 227

Negro- Americana: Title Pages from the Schomburg Collection
Title Page — Jupiter Hammon
“ — Slave Narrative

— Jacobus Capitein

From other Collections:

Bronze Mask (Guillaume Collection)

Congo Portrait Statue (Tervuren Museum) .
Benin Bronze (Berlin Ethnological Museum)
Ceremonial Mask, — Dahomey (Frankford
Museum) .

page

((

230

African Sculptures

From the Barnes Foundation Collection:

Baoule Mask . Page

Bushongo Mask .

Soudan-Niger Mask .

Y abouba Mask .

Ceremonial Mask (Ivory Coast) ....
Dahomey Bronze . . . .

((

244

255

257

258

259

260

page 256
263
265

268

Part I

THE NEGRO RENAISSANCE

THE NEW NEGRO

f THE NEW NEGRO 1

Alain Locke

In the last decade something beyond the watch and guard
of statistics has happened in the life of the American Negro
and the three norns who have traditionally presided over the
Negro problem have a changeling in their laps. The Sociolo¬
gist, the Philanthropist, the Race-leader are not unaware of
the New Negro, but they are at a loss to account for him. He
simply cannot be swathed in their formulas. For the younger
generation is vibrant with a new psychology ; the new spirit
is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the profes¬
sional observers is transforming what has been a perennial
problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro
life.

Could such a metamorphosis have taken place as suddenly
as it has appeared to? The answer is no; not because the New
Negro is not here, but because the Old Negro had long become
more of a myth than a man. The Old Negro, we must remem¬
ber, was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy.
His has been a stock figure perpetuated as an historical fiction
partly in innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate reaction¬
ism. The Negro himself has contributed his share to this
through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him
by the adverse circumstances of dependence. So for genera¬
tions in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a
formula than a human being — a something to be argued about,
condemned or defended, to be “kept down,” or “in his place,”
or “helped up,” to be worried with or worried over, harassed
or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden. The thinking
Negro even has been induced to share this same general attitude,

THE C^E W U^EGRO

to focus his attention on controversial issues, to see himself in
the distorted perspective of a social problem. His shadow, so
to speak, has been more real to him than his personality.
Through having had to appeal from the unjust stereotypes of
his oppressors and traducers to those of his liberators, friends
and benefactors he has had to subscribe to the traditional posi¬
tions from which his case has been viewed. Little true social or
self-understanding has or could come from such a situation.

But while the minds of most of us, black and white, have thus
burrowed in the trenches of the Civil War and Reconstruction,
the actual march of development has simply flanked these posi¬
tions, necessitating a sudden reorientation of view. We have
not been watching in the right direction; set North and South
on a sectional axis, we have not noticed the East till the sun
has us blinking.

Recall how suddenly the Negro spirituals revealed them¬
selves; suppressed for generations under the stereotypes of
Wesleyan hymn harmony, secretive, half-ashamed, until the
courage of being natural brought them out — and behold, there
was folk-music. Similarly the mind of the Negro seems sud¬
denly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimi¬
dation and to be shaking oflF the psychology of imitation and
implied inferiority. By shedding the old chrysalis of the
Negro problem we are achieving something like a spiritual
emancipation. Until recently, lacking self-understanding, we
have been almost as much of a problem to ourselves as we still
are to others. But the decade that found us with a problem
has left us with only a task. The multitude perhaps feels as
yet only a strange relief and a new vague urge, but the thinking
few know that in the reaction the vital inner grip of prejudice
has been broken.

With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life
of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic
phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever
pressure there may be of conditions from without. The
migrant masses, shifting from countryside to city, hurdle sev¬
eral generations of experience at a leap, but more important,
the same thing happens spiritually in the life-attitudes and

THE O^EW NiEGRO

self-expression of the Young Negro, in his poetry, his art, his
education and his new outlook, with the additional advantage,
of course, of the poise and greater certainty of knowing what
it is all about. From this comes the promise and warrant of
a new leadership. As one of them has discerningly put it:

We have tomorrow

Bright before us

Like a flame.

Yesterday, a night-gone thing

A sun-down name.

And dawn today

Broad arch above the road we came.

We march!

This is what, even more than any “most creditable record of
fifty years of freedom,” requires that the Negro of to-day
be seen through other than the dusty spectacles of past contro¬
versy. The day of “aunties,” “uncles” and “mammies” is
equally gone. Uncle Tom and Sambo have passed on, and
even the “Colonel” and “George” play barnstorm roles from
which they escape with relief when the public spotlight is off.
The popular melodrama has about played itself out, and it is
time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to
a realistic facing of facts.

First we must observe some of the changes which since the
traditional lines of opinion were drawn have rendered these
quite obsolete. A main change has been, of course, that
shifting of the Negro population which has made the Negro
problem no longer exclusively or even predominantly
Southern. Why should our minds remain sectionalized,
when the problem itself no longer is? Then the trend of
migration has not only been toward the North and the
Central Midwest, but city-ward and to the great centers of
industry — the problems of adjustment are new, practical,
local and not peculiarly racial. Rather they are an integral
part of the large industrial and social problems of our present-
day democracy. And finally, with the Negro rapidly in process

THE 5S CEW C^EGRO

of class differentiation, if it ever was warrantable to regard
and treat the Negro en masse it is becoming with every day
less possible, more unjust and more ridiculous.

In the very process of being transplanted, the Negro is
becoming transformed.

The tide of Negro migration, northward and city- ward,
is not to be fully explained as a blind flood started by the
demands of war industry coupled with the shutting off of
foreign migration, or by the pressure of poor crops coupled
with increased social terrorism in certain sections of the
South and Southwest. Neither labor demand, the boll-
weevil nor the Ku Klux Klan is a basic factor, however con¬
tributory any or all of them may have been. The wash and
rush of this human tide on the beach line of the northern
city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision
of opportunity, of social and economic freedom, of a spirit to
seize, even in the face of an extortionate and heavy toll, a
chance for the improvement of conditions. With each suc¬
cessive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes more
and more a mass movement toward the larger and the more
democratic chance — in the Negro’s case a deliberate flight not
only from countryside to city, but from medieval America
to modern.

Take Harlem as an instance of this. Here in Manhattan
is not merely the largest Negro community in the world, but
the first concentration in history of so many diverse elements
of Negro life. It has attracted the African, the West Indian,
the Negro American ; has brought together the Negro of the
North and the Negro of the South j the man from the city and
the man from the town and village \ the peasant, the student,
the business man, the professional man, artist, poet, musician,
adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter and
social outcast. Each group has come with its own separate
motives and for its own special ends, but their greatest experi¬
ence has been the finding of one another. Proscription and
prejudice have thrown these dissimilar elements into a common
area of contact and interaction. Within this area, race sympa¬
thy and unity have determined a further fusing of sentiment

WINOLP

PEI//

-V

Alain Locke

THE 3^EW U^EGRO

and experience. So what began in terms of segregation becomes
more and more, as its elements mix and react, the laboratory of
a great race-welding. Hitherto, it must be admitted that
American Negroes have been a race more in name than in
fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in experience.
The chief bond between them has been that of a common con¬
dition rather than a common consciousness ; a problem in com¬
mon rather than a life in common. In Harlem, Negro life
is seizing upon its first chances for group expression and self-
determination. It is — or promises at least to be — a race capital.
That is why our comparison is taken with those nascent centers
of folk-expression and self-determination which are playing
a creative part in the world to-day. Without pretense to their
political significance, Harlem has the same role to play for the
New Negro as Dublin has had for the New Ireland or Prague
for the New Czechoslovakia.

Harlem, I grant you, isn’t typical — but it is significant, it
is prophetic. No sane observer, however sympathetic to the
new trend, would contend that the great masses are articulate
as yet, but they stir, they move, they are more than physically
restless. The challenge of the new intellectuals among them
is clear enough — the “race radicals” and realists who have
broken with the old epoch of philanthropic guidance, senti¬
mental appeal and protest. But are we after all only reading
into the stirrings of a sleeping giant the dreams of an agitator?
The answer is in the migrating peasant. It is the “man farthest
down” who is most active in getting up. One of the most
characteristic symptoms of this is the professional man, himself
migrating to recapture his constituency after a vain effort to
maintain in some Southern corner what for years back seemed
an established living and clientele. The clergyman following
his errant flock, the physician or lawyer trailing his clients, sup¬
ply the true clues. In a real sense it is the rank and file who
are leading, and the leaders who are following. A transformed
and transforming psychology permeates the masses.

When the racial leaders of twenty years ago spoke of de¬
veloping race-pride and stimulating race-consciousness, and of
the desirability of race solidarity, they could not in any accurate

g ?HE JiEW NIEGRO

degree have anticipated the abrupt feeling that has surged up
and now pervades the awakened centers. Some of the recog¬
nized Negro leaders and a powerful section of white opinion
identified with “race work” of the older order have indeed
attempted to discount this feeling as a “passing phase, an attack
of “race nerves” so to speak, an “aftermath of the war,” and
the like. It has not abated, however, if we are to gauge by
the present tone and temper of the Negro press, or by the
shift in popular support from the officially recognized and
orthodox spokesmen to those of the independent, popular, and
often radical type who are unmistakable symptoms of a new
order. It is a social disservice to blunt the fact that the Negro
of the Northern centers has reached a stage where tutelage,
even of the most interested and well-intentioned sort, must
give place to new relationships, where positive self-direction
must be reckoned with in ever increasing measure. The Amer¬
ican mind must reckon with a fundamentally changed Negro.

The Negro too, for his part, has idols of the tribe to smash.
If on the one hand the white man has erred in making the
Negro appear to be that which would excuse or extenuate
his treatment of him, the Negro, in turn, has too often un¬
necessarily excused himself because of the way he has been
treated. The intelligent Negro of to-day. is resolved. not to
make discrimination an extenuation for his shortcomings, in
performance, individual or collective; he is trying to hold him¬
self at par, neither inflated by sentimental allowances nor de¬
preciated by current social discounts. For this he must know
himself and be known for precisely what he is, and for that
reason he welcomes the new scientific rather than the old senti¬
mental interest. Sentimental interest in the Negro, has ebbed.
We used to lament this as the falling off of our friends; now
we rejoice and pray to be delivered both from self-pity and
condescension. The mind of each racial group has had. a bitter
weaning, apathy or hatred on one side matching disillusionment
or resentment on the other; but they face each other to-day
with the possibility at least of entirely new mutual attitudes.

It does not follow that if the Negro were better known, he
would be better liked or better treated. But mutual under-

THE C^EW C^EGRO

standing is basic for any subsequent cooperation and adjust¬
ment. The effort toward this will at least have the effect of
remedying in large part what has been the most unsatisfactory
feature of our present stage of race relationships in America,
namely the fact that the more intelligent and representative
elements of the two race groups have at so many points got
quite out of vital touch with one another.

The fiction is that the life of the races is separate, and
increasingly so. The fact is that they have touched too closely
at the unfavorable and too lightly at the favorable levels.

While inter-racial councils have sprung up in the South,
drawing on forward elements of both races, in the Northern
cities manual laborers may brush elbows in their everyday
work, but the community and business leaders have experienced
no such interplay or far too little of it. These segments must
achieve contact or the race situation in America becomes des¬
perate. Fortunately this is happening. There is a growing
realization that in social effort the co-operative basis must sup¬
plant long-distance philanthropy, and that the only safeguard
for mass relations in the future must be provided in the care¬
fully maintained contacts of the enlightened minorities of both
race groups. In the intellectual realm a renewed and keen
curiosity is replacing the recent apathy 5 the Negro is being
carefully studied, not just talked about and discussed. In art
and letters, instead of being wholly caricatured, he is being
seriously portrayed and painted.

To all of this the New Negro is keenly responsive as an
augury of a new democracy in American culture. He is con¬
tributing his share to the new social understanding. But the
desire to be understood would never in itself have been suffi¬
cient to have opened so completely the protectively closed por¬
tals of the thinking Negro’s mind. There is still too much
possibility of being snubbed or patronized for that. It was
rather the necessity for fuller, truer self-expression, the realiza¬
tion of the unwisdom of allowing social discrimination to
segregate him mentally, and a counter-attitude to cramp and
fetter his own living — and so the “spLte-wall” that the intel¬
lectuals built over the “color-line” has happily been taken

THE ViEW ^CEGRO

down. Much of this reopening of intellectual contacts has
centered in New York and has been richly fruitful not merely
in the enlarging of personal experience, but in the definite en¬
richment of American art and letters and in the clarifying of
our common vision of the social tasks ahead.

The particular significance in the re-establishment of contact
between the more advanced and representative classes is that
it promises to offset some of the unfavorable reactions of the
past, or at least to re-surface race contacts somewhat for the
future. Subtly the conditions that are molding a New Negro
are molding a new American attitude.

However, this new phase of things is delicate; it will call
for less charity but more justice; less help, but infinitely closer
understanding. This is indeed a critical stage of race relation¬
ships because of the likelihood, if the new temper is not under¬
stood, of engendering sharp group antagonism and a second
crop of more calculated prejudice. In some quarters, it has
already done so. Having weaned the Negro, public opinion
cannot continue to paternalize. The Negro to-day is inevitably
moving forward under the control largely of his own objectives.
What are these objectives? Those of his outer life are hap¬
pily already well and finally formulated, for they are none
other than the ideals of American institutions and democracy.
Those of his inner life are yet in process of formation, for
the new psychology at present is more of a consensus of feeling
than of opinion, of attitude rather than of program. Still some
points seem to have crystallized.

Up to the present one may adequately describe the Negro’s
“inner objectives” as an attempt to repair a damaged group
psychology and reshape a warped social perspective. Their
realization has required a new mentality for the American
Negro. And as it matures we begin to see its effects; at first,
negative, iconoclastic, and then positive and constructive. In
this new group psychology we note the lapse of sentimental
appeal, then the development of a more positive self-respect
and self-reliance; the repudiation of social dependence, and
then the gradual recovery from hyper-sensitiveness and
“touchy” nerves, the repudiation of the double standard of

THE O^EW CNiEGRO

judgment with its special philanthropic allowances and then
the sturdier desire for objective and scientific appraisal; and
finally the rise from social disillusionment to race pride, from
the sense of social debt to the responsibilities of social contri¬
bution, and offsetting the necessary working and commonsense
acceptance of restricted conditions, the belief in ultimate esteem
and recognition. Therefore the Negro to-day wishes to be
known for what he is, even in his faults and shortcomings,
and scorns a craven and precarious survival at the price of seem¬
ing to be what he is not. He resents being spoken of as a
social ward or minor, even by his own, and to being regarded
a chronic patient for the sociological clinic, the sick man of
American Democracy. For the same reasons, he himself is
through with those social nostrums and panaceas, the so-called
solutions of his “problem,” with which he and the country
have been so liberally dosed in the past. Religion, freedom,
education, money — in turn, he has ardently hoped for and pe¬
culiarly trusted these things ; he still believes in them, but not
in blind trust that they alone will solve his life-problem.

Each generation, however, will have its creed, and that of
the present is the belief in the efficacy of collective effort, in
race co-operation. This deep feeling of race is at present the
mainspring of Negro life. It seems to be the outcome of the
reaction to proscription and prejudice; an attempt, fairly suc¬
cessful on the whole, to convert a defensive into an offensive
position, a handicap into an incentive. It is radical in tone,
but not in purpose and only the most stupid forms of opposi¬
tion, misunderstanding or persecution could make it otherwise.
Of course, the thinking Negro has shifted a little toward the
left with the world-trend, and there is an increasing group who
affiliate with radical and liberal movements. But fundamen¬
tally for the present the Negro is radical on race matters, con¬
servative on others, in other words, a “forced radical,” a social
protestant rather than a genuine radical. Yet under further
pressure and injustice iconoclastic thought and motives will in¬
evitably increase. Harlem’s quixotic radicalisms call for their
ounce of democracy to-day lest to-morrow they be beyond cure.

The Negro mind reaches out as yet to nothing but American

I2 THE U^EW 5S CEGRO

wants, American ideas. But this forced attempt to build his
Americanism on race values is a unique social experiment, and
its ultimate success is impossible except through the fullest shar¬
ing of American culture and institutions. There should be
no delusion about this. American nerves in sections unstrung
with race hysteria are often fed the opiate that the trend of
Negro advance is wholly separatist, and that the effect of its
operation will be to encyst the Negro as a benign foreign body
in the body politic. This cannot be— even if it were desirable.
The racialism of the Negro is no limitation or reservation with
respect to American life ^ it is only a constructive effort to build
the obstructions in the stream of his progress into an efficient
dam of social energy and power. Democracy itself is obstructed
and stagnated to the extent that any of its channels are closed.
Indeed they cannot be selectively closed. So the choice is not be¬
tween one way for the Negro and another way for the rest, but
between American institutions frustrated on the one hand and
American ideals progressively fulfilled and realized on the other.

There is, of course, a warrantably comfortable feeling in
being on the right side of the country’s professed ideals. We
realize that we cannot be undone without America’s undoing.
It is within the gamut of this attitude that the thinking Negro
faces America, but with variations of mood that are if anything
more significant than the attitude itself. Sometimes we have
it taken with the defiant ironic challenge of McKay:

Mine is the future grinding down to-day
Like a great landslip moving to the sea,

Bearing its freight of debris far away
Where the green hungry waters restlessly
Heave mammoth pyramids, and break and roar
Their eerie challenge to the crumbling shore.

Sometimes, perhaps more frequently as yet, it is taken in the
fervent and almost filial appeal and counsel of Weldon John¬
son’s:

O Southland, dear Southland!

Then why do you still cling
To an idle age and a musty page,

To a dead and useless thing?

THE TiEW S^EGRO

But between defiance and appeal, midway almost between cyni¬
cism and hope, the prevailing mind stands in the mood of the
same author’s To America , an attitude of sober query and
stoical challenge:

How would you have us, as we are?

Or sinking ’neath the load we bear,

Our eyes fixed forward on a star,

Or gazing empty at despair?

Rising or falling? Men or things?

With dragging pace or footsteps fleet?

Strong, willing sinews in your wings,

Or tightening chains about your feet?

More and more, however, an intelligent realization of the
great discrepancy between the American social creed and the
American social practice forces upon the Negro the taking of
the moral advantage that is his. Only the steadying and
sobering effect of a truly characteristic gentleness of spirit
prevents the rapid rise of a definite cynicism and counter-hate
and a defiant superiority feeling. Human as this reaction would
be, the majority still deprecate its advent, and would gladly
see it forestalled by the speedy amelioration of its causes. We
wish our race pride to be a healthier, more positive achievement
than a feeling based upon a realization of the shortcomings
of others. But all paths toward the attainment of a sound
social attitude have been difficult $ only a relatively few en¬
lightened minds have been able as the phrase puts it “to rise
above” prejudice. The ordinary man has had until recently
only a hard choice between the alternatives of supine and
humiliating submission and stimulating but hurtful counter-
srejudice. Fortunately from some inner, desperate resource¬
fulness has recently sprung up the simple expedient of fighting
arejudice by mental passive resistance, in other words by trying
0 ignore it. For the few, this manna may perhaps be effective,
nit the masses cannot thrive upon it.

Fortunately there are constructive channels opening out into

I4 THE T{EW Ci_EGRO

which the balked social feelings of the American Negro can

flow freely. , ,

Without them there would be much more pressure and dan¬
ger than there is. These compensating interests are racial but in
a new and enlarged way. One is the consciousness of acting as
the advance-guard of the African peoples in their contact with
Twentieth Century civilization; the other, the sense of a mis¬
sion of rehabilitating the race in world esteem from that loss
of prestige for which the fate and conditions of slavery have
so largely been responsible. Harlem, as we shall see is the
center of both these movements; she is the home of the Negro s
“Zionism.” The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat
in Harlem. A Negro newspaper carrying news material in
English, French and Spanish, gathered from all quarters of
America, the West Indies and Africa has maintained itself in
Harlem for over five years. Two important magazines both
edited from New York, maintain their news and circulation
consistently on a cosmopolitan scale. Under American auspices
and backing, three pan-African congresses have been held
abroad for the discussion of common interests, colonial ques¬
tions and the future co-operative development of Africa. In
terms of the race question as a world problem, the Negro
mind has leapt, so to speak, upon the parapets of PreJu“c
and extended its cramped horizons. In so doing it has linked
up with the growing group consciousness of the dark-peoples
and is gradually learning their common interests. As * one of
our writers has recently put it: “It is imperative that we
understand the white world in its relations to the non-white
world.” As with the Jew, persecution is making the Negro

international.

As a world phenomenon this wider race consciousness
a different thing from the much asserted rising tide of color.
Its inevitable causes are not of our making. The consequences
are not necessarily damaging to the best interests of civilization
Whether it actually brings into being new Armadas of conflict
or argosies of cultural exchange and enlightenment can only
be decided by the attitude of the dominant races in an era of
critical change. With the American Negro, his new inter

THE CJ^EW ViEGRO

nationalism is primarily an effort to recapture contact with the
scattered peoples of African derivation. Garveyism may be a
transient, if spectacular, phenomenon, but the possible role of
the American Negro in the future development of Africa is
one of the most constructive and universally helpful missions
that any modern people can lay claim to.

Constructive participation in such causes cannot help giving
the Negro valuable group incentives, as well as increased pres¬
tige at home and abroad. Our greatest rehabilitation may pos¬
sibly come through such channels, but for the present, more
immediate hope rests in the revaluation by white and black
alike of the Negro in terms of his artistic endowments and
cultural contributions, past and prospective. It must be in¬
creasingly recognized that the Negro has already made very
substantial contributions, not only in his folk-art, music espe¬
cially, which has always found appreciation, but in larger,
though humbler and less acknowledged ways. For generations
the Negro has been the peasant matrix of that section of
America which has most undervalued him, and here he has
contributed not only materially in labor and in social patience,
but spiritually as well. The South has unconsciously absorbed
the gift of his folk-temperament. In less than half a genera¬
tion it will be easier to recognize this, but the fact remains
that a leaven of humor, sentiment, imagination and tropic
nonchalance has gone into the making of the South from a
humble, unacknowledged source. A second crop of the Negro’s
gifts promises still more largely. He now becomes a conscious
contributor and lays aside the status of a beneficiary and ward
for that of a collaborator and participant in American civiliza¬
tion. The great social gain in this is the releasing of our tal¬
ented group from the arid fields of controversy and debate to
the productive fields of creative expression. The especially
cultural recognition they win should in turn prove the key to
that revaluation of the Negro which must precede or accom¬
pany any considerable further betterment of race relationships.
But whatever the general effect, the present generation will
have added the motives of self-expression and spiritual devel¬
opment to the old and still unfinished task of making material

16 THE Vi EW D^EGRO

headway and progress. No one who understandingly faces the
situation with its substantial accomplishment or views the new
scene with its still more abundant promise can be entirely
without hope. And certainly, if in our lifetime the Negro
should not be able to celebrate his full initiation into American
democracy, he can at least, on the warrant of these things,
celebrate the attainment of a significant and satisfying new
phase of group development, and with it a spiritual Coming

of Age.

NEGRO ART AND AMERICA

Albert C. Barnes

That there should have developed a distinctively Negro
art in America was natural and inevitable. A primitive race,
transported into an Anglo-Saxon environment and held in sub¬
jection to that fundamentally alien influence, was bound to
undergo the soul-stirring experiences which always find their
expression in great art. The contributions of the American
Negro to art are representative because they come from the
hearts of the masses of a people held together by like yearnings
and stirred by the same causes. It is a sound art because it comes
from a primitive nature upon which a white man’s education
has never been harnessed. It is a great art because it embodies
the Negroes’ individual traits and reflects their suffering, aspira¬
tions and joys during a long period of acute oppression and
distress.

The most important element to be considered is the psycho¬
logical complexion of the Negro as he inherited it from his
primitive ancestors and which he maintains to this day. The
outstanding characteristics are his tremendous emotional en¬
dowment, his luxuriant and free imagination and a truly great
power of individual expression. He has in superlative measure
that fire and light which, coming from within, bathes his
whole world, colors his images and impels him to expression.
The Negro is a poet by birth. In the masses, that poetry ex¬
presses itself in religion which acquires a distinction by extraor¬
dinary fervor, by simple and picturesque rituals and by a
surrender to emotion so complete that ecstasy, amounting to
automatisms, is the rule when he worships in groups. The
outburst may be started by any unlettered person provided

THE U^EW S^EGRO

with the average Negro’s normal endowment of eloquence and
vivid imagery. It begins with a song or a wail which spreads
like fire and soon becomes a spectacle of a harmony of rhythmic
movement and rhythmic sound unequalled in the ceremonies
of any other race. Poetry is religion brought down to earth
and it is of the essence of the Negro soul. He carries it with
him always and everywhere; he lives it in the field, the shop,
the factory. His daily habits of thought, speech and movement
are flavored with the picturesque, the rhythmic, the

euphonious. T

The white man in the mass cannot compete with the Negro

in spiritual endowment. Many centuries of civilization have
attenuated his original gifts and have made his mind dominate
his spirit. He has wandered too far from the elementary
human needs and their easy means of natural satisfaction. The
deep and satisfying harmony which the soul requires no longer
arises from the incidents of daily life. The requirements for
practical efficiency in a world alien to his spirit have worn
thin his religion and devitalized his art. His art and his life
are no longer one and the same as they were in primitive man.
Art has become exotic, a thing apart, an indulgence, a some¬
thing to be possessed. When art is real and vital it effects the
harmony between ourselves and nature which means happiness.
Modern life has forced art into being a mere adherent upon
the practical affairs of life which offer it no sustenance. The
result has been that hopeless confusion of values which mis¬
takes sentimentalism and irrational day-dreaming for art.

The Negro has kept nearer to the ideal of man’s harmony
with nature and that, his blessing, has made him a vagrant
in our arid, practical American life. But his art is so deeply
rooted in his nature that it has thrived in a foreign soil where
the traditions and practices tend to stamp out and starve out
both the plant and its flowers. It has lived because it was an
achievement, not an indulgence. It has been his . happiness
through that mere self-expression which is its own immediate
and rich reward. Its power converted adverse material con¬
ditions into nutriment for his soul and it made a new world in
which his soul has been free. Adversity has always been his

O^EGRO <ART A' N D ^AMERICA 21

lot but he converted it into a thing of beauty in his songs.
When he was the abject, down-trodden slave, he burst forth
into songs which constitute America’s only great music — the
spirituals. These wild chants are the natural, naive, untutored,
spontaneous utterance of the suffering, yearning, prayerful hu¬
man soul. In their mighty roll there is a nobility truly superb.
Idea and emotion are fused in an art which ranks with the
Psalms and the songs of Zion in their compelling, universal
appeal.

The emancipation of the Negro slave in America gave him
only a nominal freedom. Like all other human beings he is
a creature of habits which tie him to his past 5 equally set are
his white brothers’ habits toward him. The relationship of
master and slave has changed but little in the sixty years of
freedom. He is still a slave to the ignorance, the prejudice,
the cruelty which were the fate of his forefathers. To-day
he has not yet found a place of equality in the social, educa¬
tional or industrial world of the white man. But he has the
same singing soul as the ancestors who created the single form
of great art which America can claim as her own. Of the
tremendous growth and prosperity achieved by America since
emancipation day, the Negro has had scarcely a pittance. The
changed times did, however, give him an opportunity to de¬
velop and strengthen the native, indomitable courage and the
keen powers of mind which were not suspected during the days
of slavery. The character of his song changed under the new
civilization and his mental and moral stature now stands meas¬
urement with those of the white man of equal educational
and civilizing opportunities. That growth he owes chiefly to
his own efforts j the attendant strife has left unspoiled his
native gift of song. We have in his poetry and music a true,
infallible record of what the struggle has meant to his inner
life. It is art of which America can well be proud.

The renascence of Negro art is one of the events of our age
which no seeker for beauty can afford to overlook. It is as
characteristically Negro as are the primitive African sculptures.
As art forms, each bears comparison with the great art ex¬
pressions of any race or civilization. In both ancient and mod-

THE C^EW ViEGRO

ern Negro art we find a faithful expression of a people and
of an epoch in the world’s evolution.

The Negro renascence dates from about 1 895 when two men,
Paul Laurence Dunbar and Booker T. Washington, began to
attract the world’s attention. Dunbar was a poet, Washington
an educator in the practical business of life. They lived in
widely-distant parts of America, each working independently
of the other. The leavening power of each upon the Negro
spirit was tremendous; each fitted into and reinforced the
other; their combined influences brought to birth a new epoch
for the American Negro. Washington showed that by a new
kind of education the Negro could attain to an economic con¬
dition that enables him to preserve his identity, free his soul
and make himself an important factor in American life. Dun¬
bar revealed the virgin field which the Negro’s own talents
and conditions of life offered for creating new forms of beauty.
The race became self-conscious and pride of race supplanted
the bitter wail of unjust persecution. The Negro saw and
followed the path that was to lead him out of the wilderness
and back to his own heritage through the means of his own
endowments. Many new poets were discovered, while educa¬
tion had a tremendous quickening. The yield to art was a new
expression of Negro genius in a form of poetry which con¬
noisseurs place in the class reserved for the disciplined art of
all races. Intellect and culture of a high order became the
goals for which they fought, and with a marked degree of

success.

Only through bitter and long travail has Negro poetry at¬
tained to its present high level as an art form and the struggle
has produced much writing which, while less perfect in form,
is no less important as poetry. We find nursery rhymes, dances,
love-songs, pxans of joy, lamentations, all revealing uner¬
ringly the spirit of the race in its varied contacts with life.
There has grown a fine tradition which is fundamentally Negro
in character. Every phase of that growth in alien surroundings
is marked with reflections of the multitudinous vicissitudes that
cumbered the path from slavery to culture. Each record is
loaded with feeling, powerfully expressed in uniquely Negro

y(EGRO <ART <AND AMERICA 23

forms. The old chants, known as spirituals, were pure soul,
their sadness untouched by vindictiveness. After the release
from slavery, bitterness crept into their songs. Later, as times
changed, we find self-assertion, lofty aspirations and only a
scattered cry for vengeance. As he grew in culture, there came
expressions of the deep consolation of resignation which is
born of the wisdom that the Negro race is its own, all-sufficient
justification. Naturally, sadness is the note most often struck;
but the frequently-expressed joy, blithesome, carefree, over¬
flowing joy, reveals what an enviable creature the Negro is in
his happy moods. No less evident is that native understanding
and wisdom which — from the homely and crude expressions
of their slaves, to the scholarly and cultured contributions of
to-day — we know go with the Negro’s endowment. The black
scholar, seer, sage, prophet sings his message; that explains
why the Negro tradition is so rich and is so firmly implanted
in the soul of the race.

The Negro tradition has been slow in forming but it rests
upon the firmest of foundations. Their great men and women
of the past — Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Douglass, Dunbar,
Washington — have each laid a personal and imperishable stone
in that foundation. A host of living Negroes, better educated
and unalterably faithful to their race, are still building, and
each with some human value which is an added guarantee that
the tradition will be strengthened and made serviceable for
the new era that is sure to come when more of the principles
of humanity and rationality become the white man’s guides.
Many living Negroes — Du Bois, Cotter, Grimke, Braithwaite,
Burleigh, the Johnsons, McKay, Dett, Locke, Hayes, and
many others — know the Negro soul and lead it to richer fields
by their own ideals of culture, art and citizenship. It is a
healthy development, free from that pseudo-culture which
stifles the soul and misses rational happiness as the goal of
human life. Through the compelling powers of his poetry and
music the American Negro is revealing to the rest of the world
the essential oneness of all human beings.

The cultured white race owes to the soul-expressions of its
black brother too many moments of happiness not to acknowl-

24 THE 3\ tEW J^EGRO

edge ungrudgingly the significant fact that what the Negro has
achieved is of tremendous civilizing value. We see that in
certain qualities of soul essential to happiness our own endow¬
ment is comparatively deficient. We have to acknowledge
not only that our civilization has done practically nothing to
help the Negro create his art but that our unjust oppression
has been powerless to prevent the black man from realizing
in a rich measure the expressions of his own rare gifts. We
have begun to imagine that a better education and a greater
social and economic equality for the Negro might produce
something of true importance for a richer and fuller Ameri¬
can life. The unlettered black singers have taught us to live
music that rakes our souls and gives us moments of exquisite
joy. The later Negro has made us feel the majesty of Nature,
the ineffable peace of the woods and the great open spaces.
He has shown us that the events of our every-day American
life contain for him a poetry, rhythm and charm which we
ourselves had never discovered. Through him we have seen
the pathos, comedy, affection, joy of his own daily life, unified
into humorous dialect verse or perfected sonnet that is a work
of exquisite art. He has taught us to respect the sheer manly
greatness of the fiber which has kept his inward light burning
with an effulgence that shines through the darkness in which
we have tried to keep him. All these visions, and more, he
has revealed to us. His insight into realities has been given to
us in vivid images loaded with poignancy and passion. His
message has been lyrical, rhythmic, colorful. In short, the
elements of beauty he has controlled to the ends of art.

This mystic whom we have treated as a vagrant has proved
his possession of a power to create out of his own soul and our
own America, moving beauty of an individual character whose
existence we never knew. We are beginning to recognize that
what the Negro singers and sages have said is only what the
ordinary Negro feels and thinks, in his own measure, every
day of his life. We have paid more attention to that every¬
day Negro and have been surprised to learn that nearly all of
his activities are shot through and through with music and
poetry. When we take to heart the obvious fact that what our

5\ CEGRO <ART <A N D ^AMERICA 25

prosaic civilization needs most is precisely the poetry which
the average Negro actually lives, it is incredible that we should
not offer the consideration which we have consistently denied
to him. If at that time, he is the simple, ingenuous, forgiving,
good-natured, wise and obliging person that he has been in the
past, he may consent to form a working alliance with us for the
development of a richer American civilization to which he will
contribute his full share.

A A

x ▼ f.

A N.

ADDRESS

T 0 T H B

negroes

In the State of NEW-YORK,
Br JUPITER HAMMOK,

Setat at Jo"> turns. jV «P °< <*“ ** *
Qu«»’i VSbgt.-

■■ Or».tnali J per«i« dutGoJh jx>nfptAtr at

“ PiTi, Kulod, h. U.u

•* wwkrtii wrt® '

A&! *, 54, *5*

.N £ W - Y O R K :

hrMi t>, C A R *0 LI. ttJPATTERSOS
X». js. M*i4»-Lu«.

THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN
LITERATURE

THE

I HEROIC SLAVE,*

Ia^thrilijnc

roiWAmOTRss of §

MADISON WASHINCTOM,

| js mwi « u»sm.

PUBLISH SC pSO

PIUOBJ 10 W <?T*^

THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN
LITERATURE

William Stanley Braithwaite

True to his origin on this continent, the Negro was pro¬
jected into literature by an over-mastering and exploiting
hand. In the generations that he has been so voluminously
written and talked about he has been accorded as little artistic
justice as social justice. Ante-bellum literature imposed the
distortions of moralistic controversy and made the Negro a
wax-figure of the market place: post-bellum literature retali¬
ated with the condescending reactions of sentiment and cari¬
cature, and made the Negro a genre stereotype. Sustained,
serious or deep study of Negro life and character has thus
been entirely below the horizons of our national art. Only
gradually through the dull purgatory of the Age of Discus¬
sion, has Negro life eventually issued forth to an Age of
Expression.

Perhaps I ought to qualify this last statement that the
Negro was in American literature generations before he was
part of it as a creator. From his very beginning in this coun¬
try the Negro has been, without the formal recognition of
literature and art, creative. During more than two centuries
of an enslaved peasantry, the race has been giving evidence, in
song and story lore, of an artistic temperament and psychology
precious for itself as well as for its potential use and promise
in the sophisticated forms of cultural expression. Expressing
itself with poignancy and a symbolic imagery unsurpassed, in¬
deed, often unmatched, by any folk-group, the race in servi¬
tude was at the same time the finest national expression of

30 THE 3i_EW TiEGRO

emotion and imagination and the most precious mass of raw
material for literature America was producing. Quoting these
stanzas of James Weldon Johnson’s O Black and Unknown
Bards, I want you to catch the real point of its assertion of
the Negro’s way into domain of art:

O black and unknown bards of long ago,

How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?

Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?

Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,

Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,

That from degraded rest and servile toil
The fiery spirit of the seer should call

These simple children of the sun and soil.

O black slave singers, gone, forgot, un famed,
you — you, alone, of all the long, long line
Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,

Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.

How misdirected was the American imagination, how blinded
by the dust of controversy and the pall of social hatred and
oppression, not to have found it irresistibly urgent to make
literary use of the imagination and emotion it possessed in sue

abundance.

Controversy and moral appeal gave us Uncle Tom’s ■ Cabin ,
— the first conspicuous example of the Negro as a subject for
literary treatment. Published in 1852, it dominated in mood
and attitude the American literature of a whole generation;
until the body of Reconstruction literature with its quite dif¬
ferent attitude came into vogue. Here was sentimentalize
sympathy for a down-trodden race, but one in which was
projected a character, in Uncle Tom himself, which has been
unequalled in its hold upon the popular imagination to this
day. But the moral gain and historical effect of Uncle Tom

THE WEGRO IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 31

have been an artistic loss and setback. The treatment of Negro
life and character, overlaid with these forceful stereotypes,
could not develop into artistically satisfactory portraiture.

Just as in the anti-slavery period, it had been impaled upon
the dilemmas of controversy, Negro life with the Recon¬
struction, became involved in the paradoxes of social prejudice.
Between the Civil War and the end of the century the subject
of the Negro in literature is one that will some day inspire
the literary historian with a magnificent theme. It will be
magnificent not because there is any sharp emergence of char¬
acter or incidents, but because of the immense paradox of
racial life which came up thunderingly against the principles
and doctrines of democracy, and put them to the severest test
that they had known. But in literature, it was a period when
Negro life was a shuttlecock between the two extremes of hu¬
mor and pathos. The Negro was free, and was not free.
The writers who dealt with him for the most part refused to
see more than skin-deep, — the grin, the grimaces and the pic¬
turesque externalities. Occasionally there was some penetra¬
tion into the heart and flesh of Negro characters, but to see
more than the humble happy peasant would have been to flout
the fixed ideas and conventions of an entire generation. For
more than artistic reasons, indeed against them, these writers
refused to see the tragedy of the Negro and capitalized his
comedy. The social conscience had as much need for this
comic mask as the Negro. However, if any of the writers of
the period had possessed gifts of genius of the first caliber,
they would have penetrated this deceptive exterior of Negro
life, sounded the depths of tragedy in it, and produced a
masterpiece.

American literature still feels the hold of this tradition and
its indulgent sentimentalities. Irwin Russell was the first to
discover the happy, care-free, humorous Negro. He became
a fad. It must be sharply called to attention that the tradition
of the ante-bellum Negro is a post-bellum product, stranger in
truth than in fiction. Contemporary realism in American fiction
has not only recorded his passing, but has thrown serious doubts
upon his ever having been a very genuine and representa-

32 THE U^EW NIEGRO

tive view of Negro life and character. At best this school of
Reconstruction fiction represents the romanticized high-lights of
a regime that as a whole was a dark, tragic canvas. At most,
it presents a Negro true to type for less than two generations.
Thomas Nelson Page, kindly perhaps, but with a distant view
and a purely local imagination did little more than paint the
conditions and attitudes of the period contemporary with his
own manhood, the restitution of the over-lordship of the de¬
feated slave owners in the Eighties. George W. Cable did little
more than idealize the aristocratic tradition of the Old South
with the Negro as a literary foil. The effects, though not the
motives of their work, have been sinister. The “Uncle” and
the “Mammy” traditions, unobjectionable as they are in the set¬
ting of their day and generation, and in the atmosphere of senti¬
mental humor, can never stand as the great fiction of their
theme and subject: the great period novel of the South has
yet to be written. Moreover, these type pictures have degen¬
erated into reactionary social fetishes, and from that descended
into libelous artistic caricature of the Negro ; which has ham¬
pered art quite as much as it has embarrassed the Negro.

Of all of the American writers of this period, Joel Chandler
Harris has made the most permanent contribution in dealing
[with the Negro. There is in his work both a deepening of
interest and technique. Here at least we have something ap¬
proaching true portraiture. But much as we admire this lov¬
able personality, we are forced to say that in the Uncle Remus
stories the race was its own artist, lacking only in its illiteracy
the power to record its speech. In the perspective of time and
fair judgment the credit will be divided, and Joel Chandler
Harris regarded as a sort of providentially provided amanuensis
for preserving the folk tales and legends of a race. The three
writers I have mentioned do not by any means exhaust the list
of writers who put the Negro into literature during the last
half of the nineteenth century. Mr. Howells added a shad¬
owy note to his social record of American life with An Im¬
perative Duty and prophesied the Fiction of the Color Line.
But his moral scruples — the persistent artistic vice in
all his novels — prevented him from consummating a just

THE 2(EGR0 IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 33

union between his heroine with a touch of Negro blood and
his hero. It is useless to consider any others, because there
were none who succeeded in creating either a great story or
a great character out of Negro life. Two writers of impor¬
tance I am reserving for discussion in the group of Negro
writers I shall consider presently. One ought perhaps to say
in justice to the writers I have mentioned that their non¬
success was more largely due to the limitations of their social
view than of their technical resources. As white Americans
of their day, it was incompatible with their conception of the
inequalities between the races to glorify the Negro into the
serious and leading position of hero or heroine in fiction.
Only one man that I recall, had the moral and artistic courage
to do this, and he was Stephen Crane in a short story called
The Monster. But Stephen Crane was a genius, and therefore
could not besmirch the integrity of an artist.

With Thomas Dixon, of The Leopard's Spots, we reach
a distinct stage in the treatment of the Negro in fiction. The
portraiture here descends from caricature to libel. A little
later with the vogue of the “darkey-story,” and its devotees
from Kemble and McAllister to Octavus Roy Cohen, senti¬
mental comedy in the portrayal of the Negro similarly degen¬
erated to blatant but diverting farce. Before the rise of a new
attitude, these represented the bottom reaction, both in artistic
and social attitude. Reconstruction fiction was passing out in a
flood of propagandist melodrama and ridicule. One hesitates
to lift this material up to the plane of literature even for the
purposes of comparison. But the gradual climb of the new
literature of the Negro must be traced and measured from these
two nadir points. Following The Leopard's Spots , it was only
occasionally during the next twenty years that the Negro was
sincerely treated in fiction by white authors. There were two
or three tentative efforts to dramatize him. Sheldon’s The
Nigger, was the one notable early effort. And in fiction
Paul Kester’s His Own Country is, from a purely literary
point of view, its outstanding performance. This type of
novel failed, however, to awaken any general interest. This
failure was due to the illogical treatment of the human situa-

34 THE U^EW EGRO

tions presented. However indifferent and negative it may
seem, there is the latent desire in most readers to have honesty
of purpose and a full vision in the artist: and especially in
fiction, a situation handled with gloves can never be effec¬
tively handled. . t .

The first hint that the American artist was looking at this

subject with full vision was in Torrence’s Granny Maumee .

It was drama, conceived and executed for performance on the
stage, and therefore had a restricted appeal. But even here
the artist was concerned with the primitive instincts of the
Race, and, though faithful and honest in his portrayal, the
note was still low in the scale of racial life. It was only a
short time, however, before a distinctly new development
took place in the treatment of Negro life by white authors.
This new class of work honestly strove to endow the Negro
life with purely esthetic vision and values, but with one or
two exceptions, still stuck to the peasant level of race experience,
and gave, unwittingly, greater currency to the popular notion
of the Negro as an inferior, superstitious, half-ignorant and
servile class of folk. Where they did in a few isolated in¬
stances recognize an ambitious impulse, it was generally e-

feated in the course of the story.

Perhaps this is inevitable with an alien approach, however
well-intentioned. The folk lore attitude discovers only the
lowly and the naive : the sociological attitude finds the problem
first and the human beings after, if at all. But American art
in a reawakened seriousness, and using the technique of the
new realism, is gradually penetrating Negro life to the core.
George Madden Martin, with her pretentious foreword to a
group of short stories, The Children in the Mist, and this
is an extraordinary volume in many ways quite seriously
tried, as a Southern woman, to elevate the Negro to a higher
plane of fictional treatment and interest. In succession, fol¬
lowed Mary White Ovington’s The Shadow , in which Miss
Ovington daringly created the kinship of brother and sister
between a black boy and white girl, had it brought to disaster
by prejudice, out of which the white girl rose to a sacrifice no
white girl in a novel had hitherto accepted and endured; then

THE CNiEGRO IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 35

Shands’ White and Black , as honest a piece of fiction with
the Negro as a subject as was ever produced by a Southern
pen — and in this story, also, the hero, Robinson, making an
equally glorious sacrifice for truth and justice as Miss
Ovington’s heroine ; Clement Wood’s Nigger, with defects of
treatment, but admirable in purpose, wasted though, I think,
in the effort to prove its thesis on wholly illogical material ,
and lastly, T. S. Stribling’s Birthright , more significant than
any of these other books, in fact, the most significant novel
on the Negro written by a white American, and this in spite of
its totally false conception of the character of Peter Siner.

Mr. Stribling’s book broke ground for a white author in
giving us a Negro hero and heroine. There is an obvious
attempt to see objectively. But the formula of the Nineties, —
atavistic race-heredity, still survives and protrudes through the
flesh and blood of the characters. Using Peter as a symbol
of the man tragically linked by blood to one world and by
training and thought to another, Stribling portrays a tragic
struggle against the pull of lowly origins and sordid environ¬
ment. We do not deny this element of tragedy in Negro life,
—and Mr. Stribling, it must also be remembered, presents, too,
a severe indictment in his painting of the Southern condi¬
tions which brought about the disintegration of his hero’s
dreams and ideals. But the preoccupation, almost obsession of
otherwise strong and artistic work like O’Neill’s Emperor
Jones , All God’s Chillun Got Wings , and Culbertson’s Goat
Alley with this same theme and doubtful formula of heredi¬
tary cultural reversion suggests that, in spite of all good
intentions, the true presental of the real tragedy of Negro life is
a task still left for Negro writers to perform. This is especially
true for those phases of culturally representative race life that
as yet have scarcely at all found treatment by white American
authors. In corroborating this, let me quote a passage from a
recent number of the Independent , on the Negro novelist
which reads:

“During the past few years stories about Negroes have
been extremely popular. A magazine without a Negro

THE 3i_EW CNiEGRO

story is hardly living up to its opportunities. But almost
every one of these stories is written in a tone of conde¬
scension. The artists have caught the contagion from the
writers, and the illustrations are ninety-nine times out
of a hundred purely slapstick stuff. Stories and pictures
make a Roman holiday for the millions who are convinced
that the most important fact about the Negro is that his
skin is black. Many of these writers live in the South
or are from the South. Presumably they are well ac¬
quainted with the Negro, but it is a remarkable fact that
they almost never tell us anything vital about him, about
the real human being in the black man’s skin. Their
most frequent method is to laugh at the colored man and
woman, to catalogue their idiosyncrasies, their departure
from the norm, that is, from the ways of the whites.
There seems to be no suspicion in the minds of the writers
that there may be a fascinating thought life in the minds
of the Negroes, whether of the cultivated or of the most
ignorant type. Always the Negro is interpreted in t e
terms of the white man. White-man psychology is ap¬
plied and it is no wonder that the result often shows the

Negro in a ludicrous light.”

I shall have to run back over the years to where I began
to survey the achievement of Negro authorship. The egro
as a creator in American literature is of comparatively recent
importance. All that was accomplished between Phyllis
Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar, considered by critical
standards, is negligible, and of historical interest only. His¬
torically it is a great tribute to the race to have produced in
Phyllis Wheatley not only the slave poetess in eighteent
century Colonial America, but to know she was as good, if not
a better, poetess than Ann Bradstreet whom literary historians
give the honor of being the first person of her sex to win

fame as a poet in. America. A

Negro authorship may, for clearer statement, be classified

into three main activities: Poetry, Fiction and the Essay, with

an occasional excursion into other branches. In the drama,

THE C^EGRO IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 37

until very recently, practically nothing worth while has been
achieved, with the exception of Angelina Grimke’s Rachely
notable for its sombre craftsmanship. Biography has given us
a notable life story, told by himself, of Booker T. Washington.
Frederick Douglass’s story of his life is eloquent as a human
document, but not in the graces of narration and psychologic
portraiture, which has definitely put this form of literature
in the domain of the fine arts. Indeed, we may well believe
that the efforts of controversy, of the huge amount of discursive
and polemical articles dealing chiefly with the race problem,
that have been necessary in breaking and clearing the impeded
pathway of racial progress, have absorbed and in a way dissi¬
pated the literary energy of many able Negro writers.

Let us survey briefly the advance of the Negro in poetry.
Behind Dunbar, there is nothing that can stand the critical
test. We shall always have a sentimental and historical interest
in those forlorn and pathetic figures who cried in the wilder¬
ness of their ignorance and oppression. With Dunbar we
have our first authentic lyric utterance, an utterance more au¬
thentic, I should say, for its faithful rendition of Negro life
and character than for any rare or subtle artistry of expression.
When Mr. Howells, in his famous introduction to the Lyrics
of Lowly Life , remarked that Dunbar was the first black
man to express the life of his people lyrically, he summed up
Dunbar’s achievement and transported him to a place beside
the peasant poet of Scotland, not for his art, but precisely be¬
cause he made a people articulate in verse.

The two chief qualities in Dunbar’s work are, however,
pathos and humor, and in these he expresses that dilemma
of soul that characterized the race between the Civil War
and the end of the nineteenth century. The poetry of Dunbar
is true to the life of the Negro and expresses characteristically
what he felt and knew to be the temper and condition of his
people. But its moods reflect chiefly those of the era of Recon¬
struction and just a little beyond, — the limited experience of
a transitional period, the rather helpless and subservient era
of testing freedom and reaching out through the difficulties
of life to the emotional compensations of laughter and tears.

38 THE T{EW J^EGRO

It is the poetry of the happy peasant and the plaintive minstrel.
Occasionally, as in the sonnet to Robert Gould Shaw and the
Ode to Ethiopia there broke through Dunbar, as through the
crevices of his spirit, a burning and brooding aspiration, an
awakening and virile consciousness of race. But for the most
part, his dreams were anchored to the minor whimsies; his
deepest poetic inspiration was sentiment. He expressed a fol
temperament, but not a race soul. Dunbar was the end of a
regime, and not the beginning of a tradition, as so many care¬
less critics, both white and colored, seem to think.

After Dunbar many versifiers appeared, — all largely domi¬
nated by his successful dialect work. I cannot parade them
here for tag or comment, except to say that few have equalle
Dunbar in this vein of expression, and none have deepened it
as an expression of Negro life. Dunbar himself had clear
notions of its limitations; — to a friend in a letter from London,
March 15, 1897, he says: “I see now very clearly that Mr.
Howells has done me irrevocable harm in the dictum he laid
down regarding my dialect verse.” Not until James W.
Johnson published his Fiftieth Anniversary Ode on the emanci¬
pation in 1913, did a poet of the race disengage himself from
the background of mediocrity into which the imitation of Dun¬
bar snared Negro poetry. Mr. Johnson’s work is based upon
a broader contemplation of life, life that is not wholly con¬
fined within any racial experience, but through the racial he
made articulate that universality of the emotions felt by all
mankind. His verse possesses a vigor which definitely breaks
away from the brooding minor undercurrents of feeling which
have previously characterized the verse of Negro poets. Mr.
Johnson brought, indeed, the first intellectual substance to the
content of our poetry, and a craftsmanship which, less spon¬
taneous than that of Dunbar’s, was more balanced and precise.

Here a new literary generation begins; poetry that is racial
in substance, but with the universal note, with the conscious
background of the full heritage of English poetry. With each
new figure somehow the gamut broadens and the technical
control improves. The brilliant succession and maturing pow¬
ers of Fenton Johnson, Leslie Pinckney Hill, Everett Haw-

THE ^CEGRO IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 39

kins, Lucien Watkins, Charles Bertram Johnson, Joseph Cotter,
Georgia Douglas Johnson, Roscoe Jameson and Anne Spencer
bring us at last to Claude McKay and the poets of the younger
generation and a poetry of the masterful accent and high dis¬
tinction. Too significantly for mere coincidence, it was the
stirring year of 1917 that heard the first real masterful accent
in Negro poetry. In the September Crisis of that year, Roscoe
Jameson’s Negro Soldiers appeared:

These truly are the Brave,

These men who cast aside

Old memories to walk the blood-stained pave

Of Sacrifice, joining the solemn tide

That moves away, to suffer and to die

For Freedom — when their own is yet denied!

O Pride! A Prejudice! When they pass by
Hail them, the Brave, for you now crucified.

The very next month, under the pen name of Eli Edwards,
Claude McKay printed in The Seven Arts ,

THE HARLEM DANCER

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;

Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.

She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,

The light gauze hanging loose about her form;

To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.

Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls
Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls «>
Devoured her with their eager, passionate gfze; .

But, looking at her falsely-smiling face ; , ,

I knew her self was not in that strange piac£. ,

I n ’ r if> ' »' •> 1 , ' ■' ►

With Georgia Johnson, Anne Spencer and Angelina Giirnke,
the Negro woman poet significantly appears., Mrs. Johnson

o ^ > * *

THE T^EW DC EGRO

especially has voiced in true poetic spirit the lyric cry of Negro
womanhood. In spite of lapses into the sentimental and the
platitudinous, she has an authentic gift. Anne Spencer, more
sophisticated, more cryptic but also more universal, reveals
quite another aspect of poetic genius. Indeed, it is interesting
to notice how to-day Negro poets waver between the racial
and the universal notes.

Claude McKay, the poet who leads his generation, is a
genius meshed in this dilemma. His work is caught between
the currents of the poetry of protest and the poetry of ex¬
pression j he is in turn the violent and strident propagandist,
using his poetic gifts to clothe arrogant and defiant thoughts,
and then the pure lyric dreamer, contemplating life and nature
with a wistful sympathetic passion. When the mood of Spring
in New Hampshire or the sonnet The Harlem Dancer pos¬
sesses him, he is full of that spirit and power of beauty that
flowers above any and all men’s harming. How different in
spite of the admirable spirit of courage and defiance, are his
poems of which the sonnet If We Must Die is a typical
example. Negro poetic expression hovers for the moment, par¬
donably perhaps, over the race problem, but its highest alle¬
giance is to Poetry — it must soar.

Let me refer briefly to a type of literature in which there
have been many pens, but a single mind. Dr. Du Bois is the
most variously gifted writer which the race has produced.
Poet, novelist, sociologist, historian and essayist, he has pro¬
duced books in all these fields with the exception, I believe,
of a formal book of poems, and has given to each the distinc¬
tion of his clear and exact thinking, and of his sensitive imagi¬
nation and passionate vision. The Souls of Black Folk was
the bo’o'L'of an era; it was a painful book, a book of tor¬
tured dreams woven into the fabric of the sociologist’s docu¬
ment; 'This book has more profoundly influenced the spiritual
temper '©-f ‘the race than any other written in its generation.
It - is only 'through the intense, passionate idealism of such
substance’ Us makes The Souls of Black Folk such a quivering
rhapsody of wrongs endured and hopes to be fulfilled that

THE 5\ CEGRO IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 41

the poets of the race with compelling artistry can lift the
Negro into the only full and complete nationalism he knows
— that of the American democracy. No other book has more
clearly revealed to the nation at large the true idealism and
high aspiration of the American Negro.

In this book, as well as in many of Dr. Du Bois’s essays, it
is often my personal feeling that I am witnessing the birth
of a poet, phoenix-like, out of a scholar. Between The Souls
of Black Folk and Darkwater , published four years ago, Dr.
Du Bois has written a number of books, none more notable,
in my opinion, than his novel The Quest of the Silver Fleece ,
in which he made Cotton the great protagonist of fate
in the lives of the Southern people, both white and black.
I only know of one other such attempt and accomplishment
in American fiction — that of Frank Norris — and I am somehow
of the opinion that when the great epic novel of the South is
written this book will prove to have been its forerunner.
Indeed, the Negro novel is one of the great potentialities of
American literature. Must it be written by a Negro? To
recur to the article from which I have already quoted:

“The white writer seems to stand baffled before the
enigma and so he expends all his energies on dialect and
in general on the Negro’s minstrel characteristics. . . .
We shall have to look to the Negro himself to go all the
way. It is quite likely that no white man can do it. It
is reasonable to suppose that his white psychology will
always be in his way. I am not thinking at all about a
Negro novelist who shall arouse the world to the horror
of the deliberate killings by white mobs, to the wrongs
that condemn a free people to political serfdom. I am
not thinking at all of the propaganda novel, although
there is enough horror and enough drama in the bald
statistics of each one of the annual Moton letters to keep
the whole army of writers busy. But the Negro novelist,
if he ever comes, must reveal to us much more than what
a Negro thinks about when he is being tied to a stake and
the torch is being applied to his living flesh ; much more

THE TiEW TiEGRO

than what he feels when he is being crowded off the side¬
walk by a drunken rowdy who may be his intellectual
inferior by a thousand leagues. Such a writer, to succeed
in a big sense, would have to forget that there are white
readers; he would have to lose self-consciousness and
forget that his work would be placed before a white jury.
He would have to be careless as to what the white critic
might think of it; he would need the self-assurance to be
his own critic. He would have to forget for the time
being, at least, that any white man ever attempted to
dissect the soul of a Negro.”

What I here quote is both an inquiry and a challenge!
Well informed as the writer is, he does not seem to detect
the forces which are surely gathering to produce what he

longs for.

The development of fiction among Negro authors has been,
I might almost say, one of the repressed activities of our lit¬
erary life. A fair start was made the last decade of the
nineteenth century when Chestnutt and Dunbar were turning
out both short stories and novels. In Dunbar’s case, had he
lived, I think his literary growth would have been in the evo¬
lution of the Race novel as indicated in The Uncalled and
the Sport of the Gods. The former was, I think, the most
ambitious literary effort of Dunbar j the latter was his most
significant; significant because, thrown against the background
of New York City, it displayed the life of the race as a unit,
swayed by currents of existence, of which it was and was not
a part. The story was touched with that shadow of destiny
which gave to it a purpose more important than the mere racial
machinery of its plot. But Dunbar in his fiction dealt only
successfully with the same world that gave him the inspiration
for his dialect poems; though his ambition was to “write a novel
that will deal with the educated class of my own people.
Later he writes of The Fanatics’. “You do not know how
my hopes were planted in that book, but it has utterly dis¬
appointed me.” His contemporary, Charles W. Chestnutt,
was concerned more primarily with the fiction of the Color

THE O^EGRO IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 43

Line and the contacts and conflicts of its two worlds. He was
in a way more successful. In the five volumes to his credit,
he has revealed himself as a fiction writer of a very high
order. But after all Mr. Chestnutt is a story-teller of genius
transformed by racial earnestness into the novelist of talent.
His natural gift would have found freer vent in a flow of
short stories like Bret Harte’s, to judge from the facility and
power of his two volumes of short stories, The Wife of His
Youth and Other Stories and The Conjure Woman. But
Mr. Chestnutt’s serious effort was in the field of the novel,
where he made a brave and partially successful effort to correct
the distortions of Reconstruction fiction and offset the school of
Page and Cable. Two of these novels, The Marrow of Tra¬
dition and The House Behind the Cedars , must be reck¬
oned among the representative period novels of their time.
But the situation was not ripe for the great Negro novelist.
The American public preferred spurious values to the genuine;
the coinage of the Confederacy was at literary par. Where
Dunbar, the sentimentalist, was welcome, Chestnutt, the realist,
was barred. In 1905 Mr. Chestnutt wrote The Colonel's
Dream , and thereafter silence fell upon him.

From this date until the past year, with the exception of
The Quest of the Silver Fleece , which was published in 19 11,
there has been no fiction of importance by Negro authors.
But then suddenly there comes a series of books, which seems
to promise at least a new phase of race fiction, and possibly
the era of the major novelists. Mr. Walter White’s novel
The Fire in the Flint is a swift moving straightforward story
of the contemporary conflicts of black manhood in the South.
Coming from the experienced observation of the author, him¬
self an investigator of many lynchings and riots, it is a social
document story of first-hand significance and importance; too
vital to be labelled and dismissed as propaganda, yet for the
same reason too unvarnished and realistic a story to be great
art. Nearer to the requirements of art comes Miss Jessie
Fauset’s novel There is Confusion. Its distinction is to have
created an entirely new milieu in the treatment of the race in
fiction. She has taken a class within the race of established

44 THE Vi EW JiEGRO

social standing, tradition and culture, and given in the rather
complex family story of The Marshalls a social document
of unique and refreshing value. In such a story, race fiction,
detaching itself from the limitations of propaganda on the one
hand and genre fiction on the other, emerges » >he
line and is incorporated into the body of general and universal

aI"t.

Finally in Jean Toomer, the author of Cane, we come upon
the very first artist of the race, who with all an artist s passion
and sympathy for life, its hurts, its sympathies, its desires, its
joys, its defeats and strange yearnings, can write about t
Negro without the surrender or compromise of the artists
vision. So objective is it, that we feel that it is a mere acci en
that birth or association has thrown him into contact w h t
life he has written about. He would write just as well, just
as poignantly, just as transmutingly, about the Peasants o
Russia, or the peasants of Ireland, had experience brought him
in touch with their existence. Cane is a book of go an
bronze, of dusk and flame, of ecstasy and pain, and Jea
Toomer is a bright morning star of a new day of the race

in literature.

NEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

Young Negro

NEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

Alain Locke

The Younger Generation comes, bringing its gifts. They
are the first fruits of the Negro Renaissance. Youth speaks,
and the voice of the New Negro is heard. What stirs inarticu¬
lately in the masses is already vocal upon the lips of the tal¬
ented few, and the future listens, however the present may
shut its ears. Here we have Negro youth, with arresting vi¬
sions and vibrant prophecies 3 forecasting in the mirror of art
what we must see and recognize in the streets of reality to¬
morrow, foretelling in new notes and accents the maturing
speech of full racial utterance.

Primarily, of course, it is youth that speaks in the voice of

egro youth, but the overtones are distinctive; Negro youth
speaks out of an unique experience and with a particular repre-
>entativeness. All classes of a people under social pressure
ire permeated with a common experience; they are emotion-
i y welded as others cannot be. With them, even ordinary
iving has epic depth and lyric intensity, and this, their material
lan icap, is their spiritual advantage. So, in a day when art
ias run to classes, cliques and coteries, and life lacks more and
nore a vital common background, the Negro artist, out of the
lepths of his group and personal experience, has to his hand
ilmost the conditions of a classical art.

Negro genius to-day relies upon the race-gift as a vast
spiritual endowment from which our best developments have
ome and must come. Racial expression as a conscious motive,
t is true, is fading out of our latest art, but just as surely the
-ge of truer, finer group expression is coming in— for race
expression does not need to be deliberate to be vital. Indeed
t its best it never is. This was the case with our instinctive
n quite matchless folk-art, and begins to be the same again

< THE D^EW J^EGRO

as we approach cultural maturity in a phase of art that promises
now to be fully representative. The interval between has been
an awkward age, where from the anxious desire and attempt
to be representative much that was really unrepresentative has
come; we have lately had an art that was stiltedly self-con¬
scious, and racially rhetorical rather than racially expressive.
Our poets have now stopped speaking for the Negro— they
speak as Negroes. Where formerly they spoke to others and
tried to interpret, they now speak to their own and try to
express. They have stopped posing, being nearer the attain¬
ment of poise. , . . •

The younger generation has thus achieved an objective a

tude toward life. Race for them is but an idiom of experience,
a sort of added enriching adventure and discipline, giving
subtler overtones to life, making it more beautiful and interest¬
ing, even if more poignantly so. So experienced, it affords
a deepening rather than a narrowing of social vision. The
artistic problem of the Young Negro has not been so much
that of acquiring the outer mastery of form and technique
as that of achieving an inner mastery of mood and spirit.
That accomplished, there has come the happy release from
self-consciousness, rhetoric, bombast, and the hampering hab.
of setting artistic values with primary regard for moral effect

_ all those pathetic over-compensations of a group inferiori y

complex which our social dilemmas inflicted upon several un¬
happy generations. Our poets no longer have the hard choice
between an over-assertive and an appealing attitude. y
same effort they have shaken themselves free from ^
strel tradition and the fowling-nets of dialect, and throug
acquiring ease and simplicity in serious expression, have carried
the folk-gift to the altitudes of art. There they seek and find
art’s intrinsic values and satisfactions— and if America were

deaf, they would still sing. _ - ,

But America listens— perhaps in curiosity at first, later,

may be sure, in understanding. But— a moment of patience-
The generation now in the artistic vanguard inherits the fin*
and dearly bought achievement of another generation of cre¬
ative workmen who have been pioneers and path-breakers u

V(EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 49

the cultural development and recognition of the Negro in the
arts. Though still in their prime, as veterans of a hard strug¬
gle, they must have the praise and gratitude that is due them.
We have had, in fiction, Chestnutt and Burghardt Du Bois;
in drama, Du Bois again and Angelina Grimke; in poetry
Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Fenton and Charles Bertram
Johnson, Everett Hawkins, Lucien Watkins, Cotter, Jameson ;
and in another file of poets, Miss Grimke, Anne Spencer, and
Georgia Douglas Johnson ; in criticism and belles lettres ,
Braith waite and Dr. Du Bois; in painting, Tanner and Scott;
in sculpture, Meta Warrick and May Jackson; in acting, Gilpin
and Robeson; in music, Burleigh. Nor must the fine collab¬
oration of white American artists be omitted; the work of
Ridgeley Torrence and Eugene O’Neill in drama, of Stribling,
and Shands and Clement Wood in fiction, all of which has
helped in the bringing of the materials of Negro life out of
the shambles of conventional polemics, cheap romance and
journalism into the domain of pure and unbiassed art. Then,
rich in this legacy, but richer still, I think, in their own endow¬
ment of talent, comes the youngest generation of our Afro-
American culture: in music Diton, Dett, Grant Still, and
Roland Hayes; in fiction, Jessie Fauset, Walter White, Claude
McKay (a forthcoming book); in drama, Willis Richardson;
in the field of the short story, Jean Toomer, Eric Walrond,
Rudolph Fisher; and finally a vivid galaxy of young Negro

poets, McKay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes and Countee
Cullen.

These constitute a new generation not because of years only,
but because of a new aesthetic and a new philosophy of life.
They have all swung above the horizon in the last three years,
and we can say without disparagement of the past that in that
short space of time they have gained collectively from pub¬
lishers, editors, critics and the general public more recognition
than has ever before come to Negro creative artists in an entire
working lifetime. First novels of . unquestioned distinction,
first acceptances by premier journals whose pages are the am¬
bition of veteran craftsmen, international acclaim, the conquest
for us of new provinces of art, the development for the first

5°

THE $iEW TiEGRO

time among us of literary coteries and channels for the contact
of creative minds, and most important of all, a spiritual quick¬
ening and racial leavening such as no generation has yet felt and
known. It has been their achievement also to bring the artistic
advance of the Negro sharply into stepping alignment with
contemporary artistic thought, mood and style. They are
thoroughly modern, some of them ultra-modern, and Negro

thoughts now wear the uniform of the age..

Through their work, these younger artists have declared
for a lusty vigorous realism; the same that is molding con¬
temporary American letters, but their achievement of it, as it
has been doubly difficult, is doubly significant. The elder gen¬
eration of Negro writers expressed itself in cautious moralism
and guarded idealizations; the trammels of Puritanism were
on its mind because the repressions of prejudice were heavy
on its heart. They felt art must fight social battles and com¬
pensate social wrongs; “Be representative”: put the better foot
foremost, was the underlying mood. Just as. with the Iris,
Renaissance, there were the riots and controversies over Synge s
folk plays and other frank realisms of the younger school, so
we are having and will have turbulent discussion and dissatis¬
faction with the stories, plays and poems of the younger Negro
group. But writers like Rudolph Fisher, Zora Hurston, Jean
Toomer, Eric Walrond, Willis Richardson and Langston
Hughes take their material objectively with detached artisti
vision; they have no thought of their racy folk types as typical
of anything but themselves or of their being taken or, mistaken
as racially representative. Contrast Ellen Glasgow s Barren
Ground with Thomas Nelson Page, or Waldo Frank s Hohday
with anything of Mr. Cable’s, and you will get the true clue
for this contrast between the younger and fheeidergeneration
of Negro literature; Realism in “crossing the Potomac had
also to cross the color line. Indeed it was the other way
round; the pioneer writing of the fiction of the New ou
was the realistic fiction of Negro life. Fortunateiy justatt
time the younger generation was precipitating out, Batomla
came to attention through the award of the Prix Goncourt
Rene Maran, its author, in 1923- Though Batomla is not ot

^CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS Si

the American Negro either in substance or authorship, the
influence of its daring realism and Latin frankness was educa¬
tive and emancipating. And so not merely for modernity of
style, but for vital originality of substance, the young Negro
writers dig deep into the racy peasant undersoil of the race
life. Jean Toomer writes:

“Georgia opened me. And it may well be said that
I received my initial impulse to an individual art from my
experience there. For no other section of the country has
so stirred me. There one finds soil, soil in the sense the
Russians know it, — the soil every art and literature that
is to live must be imbedded in.” •

The newer motive, then, in being racial is to be so purely for
the sake of art. Nowhere is this more apparent, or more
justified than in the increasing tendency to evolve from the
racial substance something technically distinctive, something
that as an idiom of style may become a contribution to the
general resources of art. In flavor of language, flow of phrase,
accent of rhythm in prose, verse and music, color and tone
of imagery, idiom and timbre of emotion and symbolism, it is
the ambition and promise of Negro artists to make a distinctive
contribution. Much of this is already discernible. The inter¬
esting experiment of Weldon Johnson in Creation: A Negro
Sermon , to transpose the dialect motive and carry it through
in the idioms of imagery rather than the broken phonetics of
speech, is a case in point. In music such transfusions of racial
idioms with the modernistic styles of expression has already
taken place; in the other arts it is just as possible and likely.

hus under the sophistications of modern style may be de¬
tected in almost all our artists a fresh distinctive note that the
majority of them admit as the instinctive gift of the folk-
spint. Toomer gives a musical folk-lilt and a glamorous
sensuous ecstasy to the style of the American prose modernists.
McKay adds Aesop and peasant irony to the social novel and
folk clarity and naivete to lyric thought. Fisher adds the
terseness and emotional raciness of Uncle Remus to the art

52 THE CNiEW 3^ EGRO

of Maupassant and O. Henry. Walrond has a tropical color
and almost volcanic gush that are unique even after more than
a generation of exotic word painting by master artists. Lang¬
ston Hughes has a distinctive fervency of color and rhythm,
and a Biblical simplicity of speech that is colloquial in deriva¬
tion, but full of artistry. Roland Hayes carries the rhapsodic
gush and depth of folk-song to the old masters. Countee
Cullen blends the simple with the sophisticated so originally
as almost to put the vineyards themselves into his crystal
goblets.

There is in all the marriage of a fresh emotional endowment
with the finest niceties of art. Here for the enrichment of
American and modern art, among our contemporaries, in a
people who still have the ancient key, are some of the things
we thought culture had forever lost. Art cannot disdain the
gift of a natural irony, of a transfiguring imagination, of
rhapsodic Biblical speech, of dynamic musical swing, of cosmic
emotion such as only the gifted pagans knew, of a return to
nature, not by way of the forced and worn formula of Roman¬
ticism, but through the closeness of an imagination that has
never broken kinship with nature. Art must accept such gifts,
and revaluate the giver.

Not all the new art is in the field of pure art values. There
is poetry of sturdy social protest, and fiction of calm, dispas¬
sionate social analysis. But reason and realism have cured us
of sentimentality: instead of the wail and appeal, there is chal¬
lenge and indictment. Satire is just beneath the surface of
our latest prose, and tonic irony has come into our poetic wells.
These are good medicines for the common mind, for us they
are necessary antidotes against social poison. Their influence
means that at least for us the worst symptoms of the social
distemper are passing. And so the social promise of our recent
art is as great as the artistic. It has brought with it, first of all,
that wholesome, welcome virtue of finding beauty in oneself \
the younger generation can no longer be twitted as cultural
nondescripts” or accused of “being out of love with their own
nativity.” They have instinctive love and pride of race, and,
spiritually compensating for the present lacks of America,

* CEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 53

ardent respect and love for Africa, the motherland. Gradually
too, under some spiritualizing reaction, the brands and wounds
of social persecution are becoming the proud stigmata of
spiritual immunity and moral victory. Already enough prog¬
ress has been made in this direction so that it is no longer true
that the Negro mind is too engulfed in its own social dilemmas
for control of the necessary perspective of art, or too de¬
pressed to attain the full horizons of self and social criticism.
Indeed, by the evidence and promise of the cultured few, we
ar~ at last spiritually free, and offer through art an emanci¬
pating vision to America. But it is a presumption to speak
further for those who in the selections of their work in the
succeeding sections speak so adequately for themselves.

FICTION

THE CITY OF REFUGE

Rudolph Fisher
i

Confronted suddenly by daylight, King Solomon Gillis
stood dazed and blinking. The railroad station, the long,
white-walled corridor, the impassible slot-machine, the terri-
fying subway train — he felt as if he had been caught up in
the jaws of a steam-shovel, jammed together with other help¬
less lumps of dirt, swept blindly along for a time, and at last
abruptly dumped.

There had been strange and terrible sounds: “New York!
Penn Terminal— all change!” “Pohter, hyer, pohter, suh?”
Shuffle of a thousand soles, clatter of a thousand heels, in¬
numerable echoes. Cracking rifle-shots — no, snapping turn¬
stiles. Put a nickel in!” “Harlem? Sure. This side — next
train. Distant thunder, nearing. The screeching onslaught of
the fiery hosts of hell, headlong, breath-taking. Car doors
rattling, sliding, banging open. “Say, wha’ d’ye think this is,
a baggage car?” Heat, oppression, suffocation — eternity —
f Hundred n turdy-fif’ next!” More turnstiles. Jonah emerg¬
ing from the whale.

Clean air, blue sky, bright sunlight.

^ Gillis set down his tan-cardboard extension-case and wiped
his black, shining brow. Then slowly, spreadingly, he grinned
it what he saw: Negroes at every turn; up and down Lenox
l^venue, up and down One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street;
}ig, lanky Negroes, short, squat Negroes; black ones, brown
^nes, yellow ones; men standing idle on the curb, women,
uundle-laden, trudging reluctantly homeward, children rattle-

58 THE 3^EW C^EGRO

trapping about the sidewalks 3 here and there a white face
drifting along, but Negroes predominantly, overwhelmingly
everywhere. There was assuredly no doubt of his where¬
abouts. This was Negro Harlem.

Back in North Carolina Gillis had shot a white man and,
with the aid of prayer and an automobile, probably escaped
a lynching. Carefully avoiding the railroads, he had reached
Washington in safety. For his car a Southwest bootlegger
had given him a hundred dollars and directions to Harlem ;
and so he had come to Harlem.

Ever since a travelling preacher had first told him of the
place, King Solomon Gillis had longed to come to Harlem.
The Uggams were always talking about it 5 one of their boys
had gone to France in the draft and, returning, had never got
any nearer home than Harlem. And there were occasional
“colored” newspapers from New York: newspapers that men¬
tioned Negroes without comment, but always spoke of a white
person as “So-and-so, white.” That was the point. In Harlem,
black was white. You had rights that could not be denied
you 5 you had privileges, protected by law. And you had
money. Everybody in Harlem had money. It was a land of
plenty. Why, had not Mouse Uggam sent back as much as
fifty dollars at a time to his people in Waxhaw?

The shooting, therefore, simply catalyzed whatever sluggish
mental reaction had been already directing King Solomon’s
fortunes toward Harlem. The land of plenty was more than
that now: it was also the city of refuge.

Casting about for direction, the tall newcomer’s glance caught
inevitably on the most conspicuous thing in sight, a magnificent
figure in blue that stood in the middle of the crossing and blew
a whistle and waved great white-gloved hands. The Southern
Negro’s eyes opened wide; his mouth opened wider. Tf the
inside of New York had mystified him, the outside was amaz¬
ing him. For there stood a handsome, brass-buttoned giant
directing the heaviest traffic Gillis had ever seen 3 halting un¬
numbered tons of automobiles and trucks and wagons and
pushcarts and street-cars; holding them at bay with one hand
while he swept similar tons peremptorily on with the other;

W.EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 59

ruling the wide crossing with supreme self-assurance; and he,
too, was a Negro!

e Yet most of the vehicles that leaped or crouched at his bid¬
ding carried white passengers. One of these overdrove bounds
a few feet and Gillis heard the officer’s shrill whistle and
gruff reproof, saw the driver’s face turn red and his car draw
back like a threatened pup. It was beyond belief— impossible.
Black might be white, but it couldn’t be that white!

“Done died an’ woke up in Heaven,” thought King Solomon,
watching, fascinated ; and after a while, as if the wonder of it
were too great to believe simply by seeing, “Cullud police¬
mans! he said, half aloud; then repeated over and over, with
greater and greater conviction, “Even got cullud policemans —
even got cullud — ”

“Where y’ want to go, big boy?”

Gillis turned. A little, sharp-faced yellow man was ad¬
dressing him.

“Saw you was a stranger. Thought maybe I could help
y’ out.” P

King Solomon located and gratefully extended a slip of
paper. “Wha’ dis hyeh at, please, suh?”

The other studied it a moment, pushing back his hat and
scratching his head. The hat was a tall-crowned, unindented
brown felt; the head was brown patent-leather, its glistening
brush-back flawless save for a suspicious crimpiness near the
clean-grazed edges.

See that second corner? Turn to the left when you get
there. Number forty-five’s about halfway the block.”

“Thank y’, suh.”

“You from — Massachusetts?”

“No, suh, Nawth Ca’lina.”

/s at so? You look like a Northerner. Be with us long?”

“Till I die,” grinned the flattered King Solomon.

“Stoppin’ there?”

Reckon I is. Man in Washin’ton ’lowed I’d find lodgin’
it dis ad-dress.”

“Good enough. If y’ don’t, maybe I can fix y’ up. Harlem’s
pretty crowded. This is me.” He proffered a card.

THE O^EW JiEGRO

“Thank y’, suh,” said Gillis, and put the card in his pocket.

The little yellow man watched him plod flat-footedly on
down the street, long awkward legs never quite straightened,
shouldered extension-case bending him sidewise, wonder upon
wonder halting or turning him about. Presently, as he pro¬
ceeded, a pair of bright-green stockings caught and held his
attention. Tony, the storekeeper, was crossing the sidewalk
with a bushel basket of apples. There was a collision; the
apples rolled; Tony exploded; King Solomon apologized. The
little yellow man laughed shortly, took out a notebook, and
put down the address he had seen on King Solomon’s slip
of paper.

“Guess you’re the shine I been waitin’ for,” he surmised.

As Gillis, approaching his destination, stopped to rest, a
haunting notion grew into an insistent idea. “Dat li’l yaller
nigger was a sho’ ’nuff gen’man to show me de road. Seem
lak I knowed him befo’ — ” He pondered. That receding brow,
that sharp-ridged, spreading nose, that tight upper lip over
the two big front teeth, that chinless jaw — He fumbled
hurriedly for the card he had not looked at and eagerly made
out the name.

“Mouse Uggam, sho’ ’nuff! Well, dog-gone!”

Uggam sought out Tom Edwards, once a Pullman porter,
now prosperous proprietor of a cabaret, and told him:

“Chief, I got him: a baby jess in from the land o’ cotton
and so dumb he thinks ante-bellum’s an old woman.”

“Wher’d you find him?”

“Where you find all the jay birds when they first hit Har¬
lem — at the subway entrance. This one come up the stairs,
batted his eyes once or twice, an’ froze to the spot — with his
mouth open. Sure sign he’s from ’way down behind the sun
an’ ripe f’ the pluckin’.”

Edwards grinned a gold-studded, fat-jowled grin. “Gave
him the usual line, I suppose?”

“Didn’t miss. An’ he fell like a ton o’ bricks. ’Course

& CEGRO rOUTH SPEAKS 6 1

I ve got him spotted, but damn1 if I know jess how to switch
’em on to him.”

“Get him a job around a store somewhere. Make out
you’re befriendin’ him. Get his confidence.”

Sounds good. Ought to be easy. He’s from my state.
Maybe I know him or some of his people.”

Make out you do, anyhow. Then tell him some fairy
tale that 11 switch your trade to him. The cops’ll follow the
trade. We could even let Froggy flop into some dumb white
cop’s hands and ‘confess’ where he got it. See?”

“Chief, you got a head, no lie.”

“Don’t lose no time. And remember, hereafter, it’s better
to sacrifice a little than to get squealed on. Never refuse a
customer. Give him a little credit. Humor him along till
you can get rid of him safe. You don’t know what that guy
that died may have said; you don’t know who’s on to you
now. And if they get you — I don’t know you.”

“They won’t get me/9 said Uggam.

King Solomon Gillis sat meditating in a room half the size

of his hencoop back home, with a single window opening- into
an airshaft.

An airshaft: cabbage and chitterlings cooking ; liver and
onions sizzling, sputtering ; three player-pianos out-plunking
each other 5 a man and woman calling each other vile things 5
a sick, neglected baby wailing ; a phonograph broadcasting
blues } dishes clacking ; a girl crying heartbrokenly; waste
noises, waste odors of a score of families, seeking issue through

a common channel; pollution from bottom to top — a sewer of
sounds and smells.

«-rP0ntem^^at^n^ t^^S’ S°l°mon grinned and breathed,

°£“£one! A little later, still gazing into the sewer, he
grinned again. “Green stockin’s,” he said; “loud green I”
The sewer gradually grew darker. A window lighted up op¬
posite, revealing a woman in camisole and petticoat, arranging
her hair. King Solomon, staring vacantly, shook his head and

grinned yet again. “Even got cullud policemans!” he mum¬
bled softly.

6 2

THE J(EW WIEGRO

Uggam leaned out of the room’s one window and spat
maliciously into the dinginess of the airshaft. “Damn glad you
got him,” he commented, as Gillis finished his story. “They’s
a thousand shines in Harlem would change places with you in
a minute jess f’ the honor of killin’ a cracker.”

“But I didn’t go to do it. ’Twas a accident.”

“That’s the only part to keep secret.”

“Know whut dey done? Dey killed five o’ Mose Joplin’s
hawses ’fo he lef’. Put groun’ glass in de feed-trough. Sam
Cheevers come up on three of ’em one night pizenin’ his well.
Bleesom beat Crinshaw out o’ sixty acres o’ lan’ an’ a year’s
crops. Dass jess how ’tis. Soon’s a nigger make a li’l sump’n
he better git to leavin’. An’ ’fo long ev’ybody’s goin’ be lef’!”

“Hope to hell they don’t all come here.”

The doorbell of the apartment rang. A crescendo of foot¬
falls in the hallway culminated in a sharp rap on Gillis’s door.
Gillis jumped. Nobody but a policeman would rap like that.
Maybe the landlady had been listening and had called in the
law. It came again, loud, quick, angry. King Solomon prayed
that the policeman would be a Negro.

Uggam stepped over and opened the door. King Solomon’s
apprehensive eyes saw framed therein, instead of a gigantic
officer, calling for him, a little blot of a creature, quite black
against even the darkness of the hallway, except for a dirty,
wide-striped silk shirt, collarless, with the sleeves rolled up.

“Ah hahve bill fo’ Mr. Gillis.” A high, strongly accented
Jamaican voice, with its characteristic singsong intonation, inter¬
rupted King Solomon’s sigh of relief.

“Bill? Bill fo’ me? What kin’ o’ bill?”

“Wan bushel appels. T’ree seventy-fife.”

“Apples? I ain’ bought no apples.” He took the paper
and read aloud, laboriously, “Antonio Gabrielli to K. S. Gillis,

Debtor — ” ’ |

“Mr. Gabrielli say, you not pays him, he send policemon.”

“What I had to do wid ’is apples?”

^ CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

You bumps into him yesterday, no? Scatter appels every¬
where— on de sidewalk, in de gutter. Kids pick up an’ run
away. Others all spoil. So you pays.”

Gillis appealed to Uggam. “How ’bout it, Mouse?”

. “He’s a damn liar. Tony picked up most of ’em; I seen
him. Lemme look at that bill — Tony never wrote this thing.
This baby s jess playin’ you for a sucker.”

“Am’ had no apples, ain’ payin’ fo’ none,” announced King
Solomon, thus prompted. “Didn’t have to come to Harlem
to git cheated. Plenty o’ dat right wha’ I come fum.”

But the West Indian warmly insisted. “You cahn’t do daht,

mon. Whaht you t’ink, ’ey? Dis mon loose ’is appels an’ ’is
money too?”

“What diff’ence it make to you, nigger?”

Who you call nigger, mon? Ah hahve you understahn’ — ”

Oh, well, white folks, den. What all you got t’ do wid
dis hyeh, anyhow?”

“Mr. Gabrielli send me to collect bill ! ”

“Howl know dat?”

“Do Ah not bring bill? You t’ink Ah steal t’ree dollar,
’ey?” 9

« )17\ree dolIars an’ sebenty-fi’ cent,” corrected Gillis.

Nuther thing: wha’ you ever see me befo’? How you know
dis is me?”

„ “Ah S£e, y°U’ SUre- Ah heIP Mr‘ Gabrielli in de store.
When you knocks down de baskette appels, Ah see. Ah follow
you. Ah know you comes in dis house.”

“Oh, you does? An’ how come you know my name an’ flat
m room so good? How come dat?”

‘Ah fin’ out. Sometime Ah brings up here vegetables from
store.”

^Humph ! Mus’ be workin’ on shares.”

“J°u. pays, ’ey? You pays me or de policemon?”

ait a minute,” broke in Uggam, who had been though t-
ully contemplating the bill. “Now listen, big shorty. You
iaul hips on back to Tony. We got your menu all right”—

le'ruVe«rhe blll~“but we don’t eat your kind o’ cookin’, see?”
I he West Indian flared. “Whaht it is to you, ’ey? You

6 4

THE O^EW V^EGRO

can not mind your own business? Ah hahve not spik to you!”

“No, brother. But this is my friend, an5 I’ll be john-
browned if there’s a monkey-chaser in Harlem can gyp him
if I know it, see? Bes’ thing P you to do is catch air, toot
sweet.”

Sensing frustration, the little islander demanded the bill
back. Uggam figured he could use the bill himself, maybe.
The West Indian hotly persisted ; he even menaced. Uggam
pocketed the paper and invited him to take it. Wisely enough,
the caller preferred to catch air.

When he had gone, King Solomon sought words of thanks.

“Bottle it,” said Uggam. “The point is this: I figger you
got a job.”

“Job? No I ain’t! Wha’ at?”

“When you show Tony this bill, he’ll hit the roof and fire
that monk.”

“What ef he do?”

“Then you up ’n ask f’ the job. He’ll be too grateful to
refuse. I know Tony some, an’ I’ll be there to put in a good
word. See?”

King Solomon considered this. “Sho’ needs a job, but ain’
after stealin’ none.”

“Stealin’? ’Twouldn’t be stealin’. Stealin’s what that
damn monkey-chaser tried to do from you. This would be
doin’ Tony a favor, an’ gettin’ y’self out o’ the barrel. What’s
the hold-back?”

“What make you keep callin’ him monkey-chaser?”

“West Indian. That’s another thing. Any time y’ can
knife a monk, do it. They’s too damn many of ’em here.
They’re an achin’ pain.”

“Jess de way white folks feels ’bout niggers.”

“Damn that. How ’bout It? Y’ want the job?”

“Hm — well — I’d ruther be a policeman.”

“Policeman?” Uggam gasped.

“M-hm. Dass all I wants to be, a policeman, so I kin
police all de white folks right plumb in jail!”

Uggam said seriously, “Well, y’ might work up to that
But it takes time. An’ y’ve got to eat while y’re waitin’.”

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 65

paused to let this penetrate. “Now, how ’bout this job at
Tony’s in the meantime? I should think y’d jump at it.”
King Solomon was persuaded.

“Hm — well — reckon I does,” he said slowly.

“Now y’re tootin’!” Uggam’s two big front teeth popped
out in a grin of genuine pleasure. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Spitting blood and crying with rage, the West Indian
scrambled to his feet. For a moment he stood in front of the
store gesticulating furiously and jabbering shrill threats and
unintelligible curses. Then abruptly he stopped and took
himself off.

King Solomon Gillis, mildly puzzled, watched him from
Tony’s doorway. “I jess give him a li’l shove,” he said to
himself, “an’ he roll’ clean ’cross de sidewalk.” And a little
later, disgustedly, “Monkey-chaser!” he grunted, and went
back to his sweeping.

“Well, big boy, how y’ cornin’ on?”

Gillis dropped his broom. “Hay-o, Mouse. Wha’ you
been las’ two-three days?”

“Oh, around. Gettin’ on all right here? Had any trouble?”

“Deed I ain’t — ’ceptin’ jess now I had to throw ’at li’l jigger
out.”

“Who? The monk?”

“M-hm. He sho’ Lawd doan like me in his job. Look
like he think I stole it from him, stiddy him tryin’ to steal
from me. Had to push him down sho’ ’nuff ’fo I could git
rid of ’im. Den he run off talkin’ Wes’ Indi’man an’ shakin’
his fis’ at me.”

“Ferget it.” Uggam glanced about. “Where’s Tony?”

“Boss man? He be back direckly.”

“Listen — like to make two or three bucks a day extra?”
“Huh?”

“Two or three dollars a day more’n what you’re gettin’
already?”

THE CM^EW C^EGRO

“Ain’ I near ’nuff in jail now?”

“Listen.” King Solomon listened. Uggam hadn’t been in
France for nothing. Fact was, in France he’d learned about
some valuable French medicine. He’d brought some back
with him, — little white pills, — and while in Harlem had found
a certain druggist who knew what they were and could supply
all he could use. Now there were any number of people who
would buy and pay well for as much of this French medicine
as Uggam could get. It was good for what ailed them, and
they didn’t know how to get it except through him. But he
had no store in which to set up an agency and hence no single
place where his customers could go to get wrhat they wanted.
If he had, he could sell three or four times as much as he did.

King Solomon was in a position to help him now, same as
he had helped King Solomon. He would leave a dozen pack¬
ages of the medicine — just small envelopes that could all be
carried in a coat pocket — with King Solomon every day. Then
he could simply send his customers to King Solomon at Tony’s
store. They’d make some trifling purchase, slip him a certain
coupon which Uggam had given them, and King Solomon
would wrap the little envelope of medicine with their purchase.
Mustn’t let Tony catch on, because he might object, and then
the whole scheme would go gaflooey. Of course it wouldn’t
really be hurting Tony any. Wouldn’t it increase the number
of his customers?

Finally, at the end of each day, Uggam would meet King
Solomon some place and give him a quarter for each coupon
he held. There’d be at least ten or twelve a day — two and a
half or three dollars plumb extra! Eighteen or twenty dollars
a week!

“Dog-gone!” breathed Gillis.

“Does Tony ever leave you heer alone?”

“M-hm. Jess started dis mawnin’. Doan nobody much
come round ’tween ten an’ twelve, so he done took to doin’
his buyin’ right ’long ’bout dat time. Nobody hyeh but me
fo’ ’n hour or so.”

“Good. I’ll try to get my folks to come ’round here mostly
while Tony’s out, see?”

S^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

“I doan miss.”

“Sure y’ get the idea, now?” Uggam carefully explained
it all again. By the time he had finished, King Solomon was
wallowing in gratitude.

“Mouse, you sho’ is been a friend to me. Why, ’f ’t hadn’
been fo’ you — ”

“Bottle it,” said Uggam. “I’ll be round to your room to¬
night with enough stuff for to-morrer, see? Be sure ’n be
there.”

“Won’t be nowha’ else.”

“An’ remember, this is all jess between you ’n me.”

“Nobody else but,” vowed King Solomon:

Uggam grinned to himself as he went on his way. “Dumb
Oscar! Wonder how much can we make before the cops nab
him? French medicine — Hmph!”

Tony Gabrielli, an oblate Neapolitan of enormous equator,
wabbled heavily out of his store and settled himself over a
soap box.

Usually Tony enjoyed sitting out front thus in the evening,
when his helper had gone home and his trade was slackest.
He liked to watch the little Gabriellis playing over the side¬
walk with the little Levys and Johnsons ; the trios and quar¬
tettes of brightly dressed, dark-skinned girls merrily out for a
stroll; the slovenly gaited, darker men, who eyed them up and
down and commented to each other with an unsuppressed “Hot
damn!” or “Oh no, now!”

But to-night Tony was troubled. Something was wrong in
the store; something was different since the arrival of King
Solomon Gillis. The new man had seemed to prove himself
honest and trustworthy, it was true. Tony had tested him, as
he always tested a new man, by apparently leaving him alone
in charge for two or three mornings. As a matter of fact, the
new man was never under more vigilant observation than dur¬
ing these two or three mornings. Tony’s store was a modifica-

THE O^EW C^EGRO

tion of the front rooms of his flat and was in direct communi¬
cation with it by way of a glass-windowed door in the rear.
Tony always managed to get back into his flat via the side-
street entrance and watch the new man through this unobtru¬
sive glass-windowed door. If anything excited his suspicion,
like unwarranted interest in the cash register, he walked un¬
expectedly out of this door to surprise the offender in the act.
Thereafter he would have no more such trouble. But he had
not succeeded in seeing King Solomon steal even an apple.

What he had observed, however, was that the number of
customers that came into the store during the morning’s slack
hour had pronouncedly increased in the last few days. Before,
there had been three or four. Now there were twelve or
fifteen. The mysterious thing about it was that their pur¬
chases totalled little more than those of the original three or
four.

Yesterday and to-day Tony had elected to be in the store at
the time when, on the other days, he had been out. But Gillis
had not been overcharging or short-changing; for when Tony
waited on the customers himself — strange faces all — he found
that they bought something like a yeast cake or a five-cent
loaf of bread. It was puzzling. Why should strangers leave
their own neighborhoods and repeatedly come to him for a
yeast cake or a loaf of bread? They were not new neighbors.
New neighbors would have bought more variously and ex¬
tensively and at different times of day. Living near by, they
would have come in, the men often in shirtsleeves and slippers,
the women in kimonos, with boudoir caps covering their lumpy
heads. They would have sent in strange children for things
like yeast cakes and loaves of bread. And why did not some
of them come in at night when the new helper was off duty?

As for accosting Gillis on suspicion, Tony was too wise for
that. Patronage had a queer way of shifting itself in Harlem.
You lost your temper and let slip a single “negre” A week
later you sold your business.

Spread over his soap box, with his pudgy hands clasped on
his preposterous paunch, Tony sat and wondered. Two men
came up, conspicuous for no other reason than that they were

ViEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 69

white. They displayed extreme nervousness, looking about
as if afraid of being seen 5 and when one of them spoke to
Tony it was in a husky, toneless, blowing voice, like the sound of
a dirty phonograph record.

“Are you Antonio Gabrielli?”

“Yes, sure,” Strange behavior for such lusty-looking fel¬
lows. He who had spoken unsmilingly winked first one eye
then the other, and indicated by a gesture of his head that they
should enter the store. His companion looked cautiously up
and down the Avenue, while Tony, wondering what ailed them,
rolled to his feet and puffingly led the way.

Inside, the spokesman snuffled, gave his .shoulders a queer
little hunch, and asked, “Can you fix us up, buddy?” The
other glanced restlessly about the place as if he were constantly
hearing unaccountable noises.

Tony thought he understood clearly now. “Booze, ’ey?”
he smiled. “Sorry — I no got.”

“Booze? Hell, no!” The voice dwindled to a throaty
whisper. “Dope. Coke, milk, dice — anything. Name your
price. Got to have it.”

“Dope?” Tony was entirely at a loss. “What’s a dis,
dope?”

“Aw, lay off, brother. We’re in on this. Here.” He
handed Tony a piece of paper. “Froggy gave us a coupon.
Come on. You can’t go wrong.”

“I no got,” insisted the perplexed Tony; nor could he be
budged on that point.

Quite suddenly the manner of both men changed. “All
right,” said the first angrily, in a voice as robust as his body.
“All right, you’re clever, You no got. Well, you will get.
You’ll get twenty years!”

“Twenty year? Whadda you talk?”

“Wait a minute, Mac,” said the second caller. “Maybe the
wop’s on the level. Look here, Tony, we’re officers, see?
Policemen.” He produced a badge. “A couple of weeks ago
a guy was brought in dying for the want of a shot, see? Dope

he needed some dope — like this — in his arm. See? Well,
we tried to make him tell us where he’d been getting it, but

he was too weak. He croaked next day. Evidently he hadn’t
had money enough to buy any more.

“Well, this morning a little nigger that goes by the name
of Froggy was brought into the precinct pretty well doped up.
When he finally came to, he swore he got the stuff here at
your store. Of course, we’ve just been trying to trick you into
giving yourself away, but you don’t bite. Now what’s your
game? Know anything about this?”

Tony understood. “I dunno,” he said slowly ; and then his
own problem, whose contemplation his callers had interrupted,
occurred to him. “Sure!” he exclaimed. “Wait. Maybeso,
I know somet’ing.”

“All right. Spill it.”

“I got a new man, work-a for me.” And he told them what
he had noted since King Solomon Gillis came.

“Sounds interesting. Where is this guy?”

“Here in da store — all day.”

“Be here to-morrow?”

“Sure. All day.”

“All right. We’ll drop in to-morrow and give him the eye.
Maybe he’s our man.”

“Sure. Come ten o’clock. I show you,” promised Tony.

Even the oldest and rattiest cabarets in Harlem have sense
of shame enough to hide themselves under the ground — for
instance, Edwards’s. To get into Edwards’s you casually enter
a dimly lighted corner saloon, apparently — only apparently —
a subdued memory of brighter days. What was once the family
entrance is now a side entrance for ladies. Supporting yourself
against close walls, you crouchingly descend a narrow, twisted
staircase until, with a final turn, you find yourself in a glaring,
long, low basement. In a moment your eyes become accus¬
tomed to the haze of tobacco smoke. You see men and women
seated at wire-legged, white-topped tables, which are covered
with half-empty bottles and glasses; you trace the slow-jazz
accompaniment you heard as you came down the stairs to a

^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 71

pianist, a cornetist, and a drummer on a little platform at the
far end of the room. There is a cleared space from the foot
of the stairs, where you are standing, to the platform where
this orchestra is mounted, and in it a tall brown girl is swaying
from side to side and rhythmically proclaiming that she has the
world in a jug and the stopper in her hand. Behind a counter
at your left sits a fat, bald, tea-colored Negro, and you wonder
if this is Edwards — Edwards, who stands in with the police,
with the political bosses, with the importers of wines and worse.
A white-vested waiter hustles you to a seat and takes your
order. The song’s tempo changes to a quicker 5 the drum and
the cornet rip out a fanfare, almost drowning the piano j the
girl catches up her dress and begins to dance.

GiUis’s wondering eyes had been roaming about. They
stopped.

“Look, Mouse,” he whispered. “Look a-yondert”

“Look at what?”

“Dog-gone if it ain’ de self-same gal!”

“Wha’ d’ye mean, self-same girl?”

“Over yonder, wi’ de green stockin’s. Dass de gal made
me knock over dem apples fust day I come to town. ’Member?
Been wishin’ I could see her ev’y sence.”

“What for?” Uggam wondered.

King Solomon grew confidential. “Ain’ but two things in
dis world, Mouse, I really wants. One is to be a policeman.
Been wantin’ dat ev’y sence I seen dat cullud traffic-cop dat
day. Other is to git myse’f a gal lak dat one over yonder!”

“You’ll do it,” laughed Uggam, “if you live long enough.”

“Who dat wid her?”

“How’n hell do I know?”

“He cullud?”

“Don’t look like it. Why? What of it?”

“Hm — nuthin’ - ”

“How many coupons y’ got to-night?”

Ten. ’ King Solomon handed them over.

“Y’ought to ’ve slipt ’em to me under the table, but it’s
all right now, long as we got this table to ourselves. Here’s
y medicine for to-morrer.”

THE JS CEW U^EGRO

“Wha’?”

“Reach under the table.”

Gillis secured and pocketed the medicine.

“An5 here’s two-fifty for a good day’s work.” Uggam
passed the money over. Perhaps he grew careless; certainly
the passing this time was above the table, in plain sight.

“Thanks, Mouse.”

Two white men had been watching Gillis and Uggam from
a table near by. In the tumult of merriment that rewarded
the entertainer’s most recent and daring effort, one of these
men, with a word to the other, came over and took the vacant
chair beside Gillis.

“Is your name Gillis?”

“ ’Tain’ nuthin’ else.”

Uggam’s eyes narrowed.

The white man showed King Solomon a police officer’s
badge.

“You’re wanted for dope-peddling. Will you come along
without trouble?”

“Fo’ what?”

“Violation of the narcotic law — dope-selling.”

“Who— me?”

“Come on, now, lay off that stuff. I saw what happened
just now myself.” He addressed Uggam. “Do you know
this fellow?”

“Nope. Never saw him before to-night.”

“Didn’t I just see him sell you something?”

“Guess you did. We happened to be sittin’ here at the same
table and got to talkin’. After a while I says I can’t seem to
sleep nights, so he offers me sump’n he says’ll make me sleep,
all right. I don’t know what it is, but he says he uses it him¬
self an’ I offers to pay him what it cost him. That’s how I
come to take it. Guess he’s got more in his pocket there now.”

The detective reached deftly into the coat pocket of the
dumfounded King Solomon and withdrew a packet of envel¬
opes. He tore off a corner of one, emptied a half-dozen tiny
white tablets into his palm, and sneered triumphantly. “You’ll
make a good witness,” he told Uggam.

P^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

The entertainer was issuing an ultimatum to all sweet
mammas who dared to monkey round her loving man. Her
audience was absorbed and delighted, with the exception of
one couple— the girl with the green stockings and her escort.
They sat directly in the line of vision of King Solomon’s wide
eyes, which, in the calamity that had descended upon him, for
the moment saw nothing.

“Are you coming without trouble?”

Mouse Uggam, his friend. Harlem. Land of plenty.
City of refuge city of refuge. If you live long enough -

Consciousness of what was happening between the pair across
the room suddenly broke through Gillis’s daze like flame
through smoke. The man was trying to kiss the girl and she
was resisting. Gillis jumped up. The detective, taking the
act for an attempt at escape, jumped with him and was quick
enough to intercept him. The second officer came at once to
his fellow s aid, blowing his whistle several times as he came.

People overturned chairs getting out of the way, but nobody
ran for the door. It was an old crowd. A fight was a treat $
and the tall Negro could fight.

“ Judas Priest!”

“Did you see that?”

“Damn I ”

White both white. Five of Mose Joplin’s horses. Poison¬
ing a well. A year’s crops. Green stockings — white —
white —

“That’s the time, papa!”

“Do it, big boy!”

“Good night!”

Uggam watched tensely, with one eye on the door. The
second cop had blown for help —

Downing one. of the detectives a third time and turning to
grapple again with the other, Gillis found himself face to face
with a uniformed black policeman.

He stopped as if stunned. For a moment he simply stared.
Into his mind swept his own words like a forgotten song
suddenly recalled :

“Cullud policemans ! ”

THE C^EW NiEGRO

The officer stood ready, awaiting his rush.

“Even — got — cullud — policemans — ”

Very slowly King Solomon’s arms relaxed ; very slowly he
stood erect j and the grin that came over his features had
something exultant about it.

A A

VESTIGES

Harlem Sketches
Rudolph Fisher

shepherd! lead us

Ezekiel Taylor, preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

walked slowly along One Hundred and Thirty-third Street

conspicuously alien. He was little and old and bent. A short’

bushy white beard framed his shiny black face and his tieless

celluloid collar. A long, greasy, green-black Prince Albert,

with lapels frayed and buttons worn through to their metal

hung loosely from his shoulders. His trousers were big and

baggy and limp, yet not enough so to hide the dejected bend
of his knees.

A little boy noted the beard and gibed, “Hey, Santa Claus I
Taint Chns’mas yet!” And the little boy’s playmates
chorused, “Haw, haw! Lookit the colored Santa Claus!”

“For of such is the kingdom of heaven,” mused Ezekiel
laylor. No. The kingdom of Harlem. Children turned
into mockers. Satan in the hearts of infants. Harlem— city
of the devil — outpost of hell.

Darkness settled, like the gloom in the old preacher’s heart;
arkness an hour late, for these sinners even tinkered with
God s time, substituting their “daylight-saving.” Wicked, yes.
out sad too, as though they were desperately warding off the
inescapable night of sorrow in which they must suffer for their
sms Harlem. What a field! What numberless souls to
save These very taunting children who knew not even the
simplest of the commandments —

But he was old and alone and defeated. The world had
called to his best. It had offered money, and they had gone;
ftrst the young men whom he had fathered, whom he had

76 THE J(EW V^EGRO

brought up from infancy in his little Southern church; then
their wives and children, whom they eventually sent for; and
finally their parents, loath to leave their shepherd and their
dear, decrepit shacks, but dependent and without choice.

“Whyn’t y’ come to New York?” old Deacon Gassoway had
insisted. “Martin and Eli and Jim Lee and his fambly’s all
up da’ now an’ doin’ fine. We’ll all git together an’ start a
chu’ch of our own, an’ you’ll still be pastor an’ it’ll be jes’
same as ’twas hyeh.” Full of that hope, he had come. But
where were they? He had captained his little ship till it
sank; he had clung to a splint and been tossed ashore; but
the shore was cold, gray, hard and rock-strewn.

He had been in barren places before but God had been there
too. Was Harlem then past hope? Was the connection be¬
tween this place and heaven broken, so that the servant of
God went hungry while little children ridiculed? Into his
mind, like a reply, crept an old familiar hymn, and he found
himself humming it softly:

The Lord will provide,

In some way or ’nother,

The Lord will provide.

It may not be in your way,

It may not be in mine,

But yet in His own way
The Lord will provide.

Then suddenly, astonished, he stopped, listening. He had
not been singing alone — a chorus of voices somewhere near
had caught up his hymn. Its volume was gradually increasing.
He looked about for a church. There was none. He covered
his deaf ear so that it might not handicap his good one. The
song seemed to issue from one of the private houses a little
way down the street.

He approached with eager apprehension and stood wonder-
ingly before a long flight of brownstone steps leading to an
open entrance. The high first floor of the house, that to which

&CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 77

the steps led, was brightly lighted, and the three front win¬
dows had their panes covered with colored tissue-paper de¬
signed to resemble church windows. Strongly, cheeringly the
song came out to the listener:

The Lord will provide,

In some way or ’nother,

The Lord will provide.

Ezekiel Taylor hesitated an incredulous moment, then smil¬
ing, he mounted the steps and went in.

The Reverend Shackleton Ealey had been inspired to preach
the gospel by the draft laws of 19x7. He remained in the
profession not out of gratitude to its having kept him out of
war, but because he found it a far less precarious mode of
living than that devoted to poker, black-jack and dice. He
was stocky and flat-faced and yellow, with many black freckles
and the eyes of a dogfish. And he was clever enough not to
conceal his origin, but to make capital out of his conversion
from gambler to preacher and to confine himself to those less
enlightened groups that thoroughly believed in the possibility
of so sudden and complete a transformation.

The inflow of rural folk from the South was therefore
fortune, and Reverend Shackleton Ealey spent hours in Penn¬
sylvania station greeting newly arrived migrants, urging them
to vis!t his meeting-place and promising them the satisfaction
of that old-time religion.” Many had come— and contributed.

fhis was prayer-meeting night. Reverend Ealey had his
seat on a low platform at the distant end of the double room
originally designed for a “parlor.” From behind a pulpit-
stand improvised out of soap-boxes and covered with calico
he counted his congregation and estimated his profit.

A stranger entered uncertainly, looked about a moment, and
took a seat near the door. Reverend Shackleton Ealey ap¬
praised him: a little bent-over old man with a bushy white
beard and a long Prince Albert coat. Perfect type— fertile
soil. He must greet this stranger at the close of the meeting
and effusively make him welcome.

THE $iEW J^EGRO

But Sister Gassoway was already by the stranger’s side, shak¬
ing his hand vigorously and with unmistakable joy; and during
the next hymn she came over to old man Gassoway and whis¬
pered in his ear, whereupon he jumped up wide-eyed, looked
around, and made broadly smiling toward the newcomer.
Others turned to see, and many, on seeing, began to whisper
excitedly into their neighbor’s ear and turned to see again.
The stranger was occasioning altogether too great a stir. Rev¬
erend Ealey decided to pray.

His prayer was a masterpiece. It besought of God protec¬
tion for His people in a strange and wicked land; it called
down His damnation upon those dens of iniquity, the dance
halls, the theaters, the cabarets; it berated the poker-sharp, the
blackjack player, the dice-roller; it denounced the drunkard,
the bootlegger, the dope-peddler; and it ended in a sweeping
tirade against the wolf-in-sheep’s clothing, whatever his mo¬
tive might be.

Another hymn and the meeting came to a close.

The' stranger was surrounded before Reverend Ealey could
reach him. When finally he approached the old preacher with
extended hand and hollow-hearted smile, old man Gassoway
was saying:

“Yas, suh, Rev’n Taylor, dass jes’ whut we goin’ do. Start
makin’ ’rangements tomorrer. Martin an’ Jim Lee’s over to
Ebeneezer, but dey doan like it ’tall. Says hit’s too hifalutin
for ’em, de way dese Harlem cullud folks wushup; Ain’t got
no Holy Ghos’ in ’em, dass whut. Jes’ come in an’ set down
an’ git up an’ go out. Never moans, never shouts, never even
says ‘amen.’ Most of us is hyeh, an’ we gonna git together an’
start us a ch’ch of our own, wid you f’ pastor, like we said.
Yas, suh. Hyeh’s Brother Ealey now. Brother Ealey, dis
hyeh’s our old preacher Rev’n Taylor. We was jes’ tellin’
him — ”

The Reverend Shackleton Ealey had at last a genuine reve¬
lation — that the better-yielding half of his flock was on the
wing. An old oath of frustration leaped to his lips — “God — ”
but he managed to bite it in the middle — “bless you, my
brother,” he growled.

W.EGRO rOUTH SPEAKS

MAJUTAH

It was eleven o’clock at night. Majutah knew that Harry
would be waiting on the doorstep downstairs. He knew better
than to ring the bell so late — she had warned him. And there
was no telephone. Grandmother wouldn’t consent to having
a telephone in the flat — she thought it would draw lightning.
As if every other flat in the house didn’t have one, as if light¬
ning would strike all the others and leave theirs unharmed!
Grandmother was such a nuisance with her old fogeyisms. If
if weren’t for her down-home ideas there’d be no trouble
getting out now to go to the cabaret with Harry. As it was,
Majutah would have to steal down the hall past Grandmother’s
room in the hope that she would be asleep.

Majutah looked to her attire. The bright red sandals and
scarlet stockings, she fancied, made her feet look smaller and
her legs bigger. This was desirable, since her black crepe dress,
losing in width what style had added to its length, would not
permit her to sit comfortably and cross her knees without occa¬
sioning ample display of everything below them. Her vanity-
^se mirror revealed how exactly the long pendant earrings
matched her red coral beads and how perfectly becoming the
aew close bob was, and assured her for the tenth time that
Egyptian rouge made her skin look lighter. She was ready.

Into the narrow hallway she tipped, steadying herself
igainst the walls, and slowly approached the outside door at
he end. Grandmother’s room was the last off the hallway.
Vlajutah reached it, slipped successfully past, and started
ilently to open the door to freedom.

“Jutie?”

How she hated to be called Jutie! Why couldn’t the
neddlesome old thing say Madge like everyone else?

“Ma’am?”

“Wha’ you goin’ dis time o’ night?”

“Just downstairs to mail a letter.”

THE U^EW y(EGRO

“You easin’ out mighty quiet, if dat’s all you goin’ do.
Come ’eh. Lemme look at you.”

Majutah slipped off her pendants and beads and laid them
on the floor. She entered her grandmother’s room, standing
where the foot of the bed would hide her gay shoes and
stockings. Useless precautions. The shrewd old woman in¬
spected her granddaughter a minute in disapproving silence,
then asked:

“Well, wha’s de letter?”

“Hello, Madge,” said Harry. “What held you up? You
look mad enough to bite bricks.”

“I am. Grandmother, of course. She’s a pest. Always
nosing and meddling. I’m grown, and the money I make
supports both of us, and I’m sick of acting like a kid just to
please her.”

“How’d you manage?”

“I didn’t manage. I just gave her a piece of my mind and
came on out.”

“Mustn’t hurt the old lady’s feelings. It’s just her way of
looking out for you.”

“I don’t need any looking out for — or advice either!”

“Excuse me. Which way — Happy’s or Edmonds’?”

“Edmonds’ — darn it!”

“Right.”

It was two o’clock in the morning. Maj Utah’s grandmother
closed her Bible and turned down the oil lamp by which she
preferred to read it. For a long time she sat thinking of
Jutie — and 0f Harlem, this city of Satan. It was Harlem that
had changed Jutie — this great, noisy, heartless, crowded place
where you lived under the same roof with a hundred people
you never knew; where night was alive and morning dead.
It was Harlem — those brazen women with whom Jutie sewed,
who swore and shimmied and laughed at the suggestion of
going to church. Jutie wore red stockings. Jutie wore dresses
that looked like nightgowns. Jutie painted her face and
straightened her hair, instead of leaving it as God intended.
J utie — lied — often.

8 1

A CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

And while Madge laughed at a wanton song, her grand¬
mother knelt by her bed and through the sinful babel of the
airshaft, through her own silent tears, prayed to God in heaven
for Jutie’s lost soul.

learnin’

“Too much learnin’ ain’ good P nobody. When I was her
age I couldn’t write my own name.”

“You can’t write much mo’ ’n that now. Too much learnin’!
Whoever heard o’ sich a thing!”

Anna’s father, disregarding experience in arguing with his
wife, pressed his point. “Sho they’s sich a thing as too much
learnin’! ’At gal’s gittin’ so she don’t b’lieve nuthin’!”

“Hmph ! Didn’t she jes’ tell me las’ night she didn’ b’lieve
they ever was any Adam an’ Eve?”

“Well, I ain’ so sho they ever was any myself! An’ one
thing is certain: If that gal o’ mine wants to keep on studyin’
an go up there to that City College an’ learn how to teach
school an’ be somebody, I’ll work my fingers to the bone to
help her do it! Now! ”

“That ain’ what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You ain’ worked no
harder n I is to help her git this far. Hyeh she is ready to
graduate from high school. Think of it — high school! When
we come along they didn’ even have no high schools. Fus’
thing y know she be so far above us we can’t reach her with
a fence-rail. Then you’ll wish you’d a listened to me. What
I says is, she done gone far enough.”

Ain’ no sich thing as far enough when you wants to go
farther. ’Tain’ as if it was gonna cost a whole lot. That’s the
trouble with you cullud folks now. Git so far an’ stop — set
down — through — don’t want no mo’.” Her disgust was
boundless. “Y’ got too much cotton field in you, that’s what! ”

The father grinned. “They sho’ ain’ no cotton field in yo’
aiouth, honey.”

“No, they ain’t. An’ they ain’ no need o’ all this arguin’
either, ’cause all that gal’s got to do is come in hyeh right now

THE CNiEW O^EGRO

an’ put her arms ’roun’ y’ neck, an5 you’d send her to Europe
if she wanted to go ! ”

“Well, all I says is, when dey gits to denyin’ de Bible hit’s
time to stop ’em.”

“Well all I says is, if Cousin Sukie an’ yo’ no ’count brother,
Jonathan, can send their gal all the way from Athens to them
Howard’s an’ pay car-fare an’ boa’d an’ ev’ything, we can send
our gal — ”

She broke off as a door slammed. There was a rush, a de¬
lightful squeal, and both parents were being smothered in a
cyclone of embraces by a wildly jubilant daughter.

“Mummy! Daddy! I won it! I won it!”

“What under the sun — ?”

“The scholarship, Mummy! The scholarship!”

“No!”

“Yes, I did! I can go to Columbia! I can go to Teachers
College! Isn’t it great?”

Anna’s mother turned triumphantly to her husband ; but
he was beaming at his daughter.

“You sho’ is yo’ daddy’s chile. Teachers College! Why,
that’s wha’ I been wantin’ you to go all along!”

REVIVAL

Rare sight in a close-built, top-heavy city — space. A wide
open lot, extending along One Hundred and Thirty-eighth
Street almost from Lenox to Seventh Avenue; baring the
mangy backs of a long row of One Hundred and Thirty-ninth
Street houses; disclosing their gaping, gasping windows, their
shameless strings of half-laundered rags, which gulp up what
little air the windows seek to inhale. Occupying the Lenox
Avenue end of the lot, the so-called Garvey tabernacle, wide,
low, squat, with its stingy little entrance; occupying the other,
the church tent where summer camp meetings are held.

Pete and his buddy, Lucky, left their head-to-head game of
coon-can as darkness came on. Time to go out — had to save

& C.EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 83

gas. Pete went to the window and looked down at the tent
across the street.

“Looks like the side show of a circus. Ever been in?”

I Not me. I m a preacher’s son — got enough o’ that stuff
when I was a kid and couldn’t protect myself.”

“Ought to be a pretty good show when some o’ them old-
time sisters get happy. Too early for the cabarets 5 let’s go in
a while, just for the hell of it.”

“You sure are hard up for somethin’ to do.”

“Aw, come on. Somethin’ funny’s bound to happen. You
might even get religion, you dam’ bootlegger.”

Lucky grinned. “Might meet some o’ my customers, you
mean.”

Through the thick, musty heat imprisoned by the canvas
shelter a man’s voice rose, leading a spiritual. Other voices
chimed eagerly in, some high, clear, sweet; some low, mellow,
full,— all swelling, rounding out the refrain till it filled the
place, so#that it seemed the flimsy walls and roof must soon be
torn from their moorings and swept aloft with the song:

Where you running, sinner?

Where you running, I say?

Running from the fire —

You can’t cross here!

The preacher stood waiting for the song to melt away.
There was a moment of abysmal silence, into which the thou¬
sand blasphemies filtering in from outside dropped unheeded.

The preacher was talking in deep, impressive tones. One
0 d patriarch was already supplementing each statement with
a matter-of-fact “amen!” of approval.

The preacher was describing hell. He was enumerating
without exception the horrors that befall the damned: mad¬
dening thirst for the drunkard; for the gambler, insatiable
ame, his own greed devouring Jiis soul. The preacher’s voice
no longer talked — it sang; mournfully at first, monotonously
up and down, up and down — a chant in minor mode ; then more
intensely, more excitedly; now fairly strident.

THE ViEW NIEGRO

The amens of approval were no longer matter-of-fact, per¬
functory. They were quick, spontaneous, escaping the lips of
their own accord ; they were frequent and loud and began to
come from the edges of the assembly instead of just the front
rows. The old men cried, “Help him, Lord!” “Preach the
word!” “Glory!” taking no apparent heed of the awfulness
of the description, and the old women continuously moaned
aloud, nodding their bonneted heads, or swaying rhythmically
forward and back in their seats.

Suddenly the preacher stopped, leaving the old men and old
women still noisy with spiritual momentum. He stood mo¬
tionless till the last echo of approbation subsided, then repeated
the text from which his discourse had taken origin; repeated it
in a whisper, lugubrious, hoarse, almost inaudible: “ ‘In—
hell — ’ ” paused, then without warning, wildly shrieked, “ ‘In
hell — ’ ” stopped — returned to his hoarse whisper — “ ‘he
lifted up his eyes. . . d ”

“What the hell you want to leave for?” Pete complained
when he and Lucky reached the sidewalk. “That old bird
would ’a’ coughed up his gizzard in two more minutes. What’s
the idea?”

“Aw hell — I don’t know. — You think that stuff’s funny.
You laugh at it. I don’t, that’s all.” Lucky hesitated. The
urge to speak outweighed the fear of being ridiculed. “Dam’
’f I know what it is — maybe because it makes me think of the
old folks or somethin’ — but — hell — it just sorter — gets
me — ”

Lucky turned abruptly away and started off. Pete watched
him for a moment with a look that should have been astonished,
outraged, incredulous — but wasn’t. He overtook him, put an
arm about his shoulders, and because he had to say something
as they walked on, muttered reassuringly:

“Well — if you ain’t the damndest fool — ”

John Matheus

The stir of life echoed. On the bridge between Ohio and
West Virginia was the rumble of heavy trucks, the purr of
high power engines in Cadillacs and Paiges, the rattle of Fords.
A string of loaded freight cars pounded along on the C. & P.
tracks, making a thunderous, if tedious way to Mingo. A
steamboat’s hoarse whistle boomed forth between the swish,
swish, chug, chug of a mammoth stern paddle wheel with the
asthmatic poppings of the pistons. The raucous shouts of
smutty speaking street boys, the noises of a steam laundry, the
clank and clatter of a pottery, the godless voices of women
from Water Street houses of ill fame, all these blended in a
sort of modern babel, common to all the towers of destruction
erected by modern civilization.

These sounds were stirring when the clock sounded six on
top of the Court House, that citadel of Law and Order, with
the statue of Justice looming out of an alcove above the im¬
posing stone entrance, blindfolded and in her right hand the
scales of Judgment. Even so early in the evening the centers
from which issued these inharmonious notes were scarcely
visible. This sinister cloak of a late November twilight Ohio
alley fog had stealthily spread from somewhere beneath the
somber river bed, down from somewhere in the lowering West
Virginia hills. The fog extended its tentacles over city and
river, gradually obliterating traces of familiar landscapes. At
ve-thirty the old Panhandle bridge, supported by massive
sandstone pillars, stalwart as when erected fifty years before
to serve a generation now passed behind the portals of life

°utjine a^inst the Sky as the toll keepers
the New bridge looked northward up the Ohio River.

1 Awarded first prize Opportunity contest, 1925.

THE A (EW A CEGRO

Now at six o’clock the fog no longer distorted $ it blotted out,
annihilated. One by one the street lights came on, giving an
uncertain glare in spots, enabling peeved citizens to tread their
way homeward without recognizing their neighbor ten feet
ahead, whether he might be Jew or Gentile, Negro or Pole,
Slav, Croatian, Italian or one hundred per cent American.

An impatient crowd of tired workers peered vainly through
the gloom to see if the headlights of the interurban car were
visible through the thickening haze. The car was due at Sixth
and Market at six-ten and was scheduled to leave at six-fifteen
for many little towns on the West Virginia side.

At the same time as these uneasy toilers were waiting, on the
opposite side of the river the car had stopped to permit some
passengers to descend and disappear in the fog. The motor-
man, fagged and jaded by the monotony of many stoppings
and startings, waited mechanically for the conductor’s bell to
signal, “Go ahead.”

The fog was thicker, more impenetrable. It smothered the
headlight. Inside the car in the smoker, that part of the seats
nearest the motorman’s box, partitioned from the rest, the
lights were struggling bravely against a fog of tobacco smoke,
almost as opaque as the dull gray blanket of mist outside.

A group of red, rough men, sprawled along the two op¬
posite bench-formed seats, parallel to the sides of the car,
were talking to one another in the thin, flat colorless English
of their mountain state, embellished with the homely idioms
of the coal mine, the oil field, the gas well.

“When does this here meetin’ start, Bill?”

“That ’air notice read half after seven.”

“What’s time now?”

“Damned ’f I know. Hey, Lee, what time’s that pocket
clock of yourn’s got?”

“Two past six.”

There was the sound of a match scratching against the sole
of a rough shoe.

“Gimme a light, Lafe.”

In attempting to reach for the burning match before its
flame was extinguished, the man stepped forward and stumbled

0\ CEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 87

over a cheap suitcase of imitation leather. A vile-looking stogie
fell in the aisle.

“God! Your feet’re bigger’n Bills’s.”

The crowd laughed uproariously. The butt of this joke
grinned and showed a set of dirty nicotine-stained teeth. He
recovered his balance in time to save the flaring match. He
was a tremendous man, slightly stooped, with taffy-colored,
straggling hair and little pig eyes.

Between initial puffs he drawled: “Now you’re barkin’ up
the wrong tree. I only wear elevens.”

“Git off’n me, Lee Cromarty,” growled Bill. “You hadn’t
ought to be rumlin’ of my feathers the wrong way — and you
a-plannin’ to ride the goat.”

Lake, a consumptive appearing, undersized, bovine-eyed in¬
dividual, spat out the remark: “Naow, there! You had better
be kereful. Men have been nailed to the cross for less than
that.”

“Ha! ha! — ho! ho! ho!”

There was a joke to arouse the temper of the crowd.

A baby began to cry lustily in the rear and more commodious
end of the car reserved for nonsmokers. His infantine wail¬
ing smote in sharp contrast upon the ears of the hilarious
joshers, filling the silence that followed the subsidence of
the laughter.

“Taci, bimba. Non aver paura!”

Nobody understood the musical words of the patient,
Madonna-eyed Italian mother, not even the baby, for it con¬
tinued its yelling. She opened her gay-colored shirt waist and
pressed the child to her bosom. He was quieted.

“She can’t speak United States, but I bet her Tony Spaghetti
votes the same as you an’ me. The young ’un ’ll have more to
say about the future of these United States than your children
an’ mine unless we carry forward the work such as we are
going to accomplish to-night.”

“Yeh, you’re damned right,” answered the scowling com¬
panion of the lynx-eyed citizen in khaki clothes, who had
thus commented upon the foreign woman’s offspring.

“They breed like cats. They’ll outnumber us, unless - ”

THE 2(EW A CEGRO

A smell of garlic stifled his speech. Nich and Mike Axa-
minter, late for the night shift at the La Belle, bent over the
irate American, deluging him with the odor of garlic and
voluble, guttural explosions of a Slovak tongue.

“What t’ hell! Git them buckets out o’ my face, you
hunkies, you!”

Confused and apologetic the two men moved forward.

• • « • •

“Isn’t this an awful fog, Barney,” piped a gay, girlish voice.

“I’ll tell the world it is,” replied her red-haired companion,
flinging a half-smoked cigarette away in the darkness as he
assisted the girl to the platform.

They made their way to a vacant seat in the end of the car
opposite the smoker, pausing for a moment respectfully to
make the sign of the cross before two Sisters of Charity, whose
flowing black robes and ebon headdress contrasted strikingly
with the pale whiteness of their faces. The nuns raised their
eyes, slightly smiled and continued their orisons on dark
decades of rosaries with pendant crosses of ivory.

“Let’s sit here,” whispered the girl. “I don’t want to be
by those niggers.”

In a few seconds they were settled. There were cooings
of sweet words, limpid-eyed soul glances. They forgot all
others. The car was theirs alone.

“Say, boy, ain’t this some fog. Yuh can’t see the old berg.”

“ ’Sthat so. I hadn’t noticed.”

Two Negro youths thus exchanged words. They were well
dressed and sporty.

“Well, it don’t matter, as long as it don’t interfere with
the dance.”

“I hope Daisy will be there. She’s some stunnin’ high-
brown an’ I don’t mean maybe.”

“O boy!”

Thereupon one began to hum “Daddy, O Daddy” and the
other whistled softly the popular air from “Shuffle Along”
entitled “Old-Fashioned Love.”

“Oi, oi! Ven I say vill dis car shtart. Ve must mek dot
train fur Pittsburgh.”

S^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 89

“Ach, Ish ka bibble. They can’t do a thing without us,
Laban.”

They settled down in their seats to finish the discussion in
Yiddish, emphasizing the conversation with shrugs of the
shoulder and throaty interjections.

In a seat apart to themselves, for two seats in front and
behind were unoccupied, sat an old Negro man and a Negro
woman, evidently his wife. Crowded between them was a
girl of fourteen or fifteen.

“This heah is suah cu’us weather,” complained the old man.

“We all nevah had no sich fog in Oklahoma.”

The girl’s hair was bobbed and had been straightened by
“Poro” treatment, giving her an Egyptian cast of features.

“Gran’pappy,” said the girl, “yo’ cain’t see ovah yander.”

“Ain’t it de troot, chile.”

“Ne’ min’, sugah,” assured the old woman. “Ah done paid
dat ’ployment man an’ he sayed yo’ bound tuh lak de place.
Dis here lady what’s hirin’ yo’ is no po’ trash an’ she wants
a likely gal lak yo’ tuh ten’ huh baby.”

■

Now these series of conversations did not transpire in
chronological order. They were uttered more or less simul¬
taneously during the interval that the little conductor stood
on tiptoe in an effort to keep one hand on the signal rope,
craning his neck in a vain and dissatisfied endeavor to pierce
the miasma of the fog. The motorman chafed in his box,
thinking of the drudging lot of the laboring man. He regis¬
tered discontent.

The garrulous group in the smoker were smoldering
cauldrons of discontent. In truth their dissatisfaction ran the
gamut of hate. It was stretching out to join hands with an
unknown and clandestine host to plot, preserve, defend their
dwarfed and twisted ideals.

The two foreign intruders in the smoker squirmed under the
merciless, half articulate antipathy. They asked nothing but
a job to make some money. In exchange for that magic
English word job, they endured the terror that walked by day,

THE E^EW 3\ CEGRO

the boss. They grinned stupidly at profanity, dirt, disease,
disaster. Yet they were helping to make America.

Three groups in the car on this foggy evening were united
under the sacred mantle of a common religion. Within its
folds they sensed vaguely a something of happiness. The
Italian mother radiated the joy of her child. Perhaps in honor
of her and in reverence the two nuns with downcast eyes, trying
so hard to forget the world, were counting off the rosary of
the blessed Virgin — “Ave, Maria,” “Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women.”

The youth and his girl in their tiny circle of mutual attrac¬
tion and affection could not as in Edwin Markham’s poem
widen the circle to include all, or even embrace that small cir¬
cumscribed area of humanity within the car.

And the Negroes? Surely there was no hate in their minds.
The gay youths were rather indifferent. The trio from the
South, journeying far for a greater freedom philosophically
accepted the inevitable “slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune.”

The Jews were certainly enveloped in a racial consciousness,
unerringly fixed on control and domination of money,
America’s most potent factor in respectability.

The purplish haze of fog contracted. Its damp presence
slipped into the car and every passenger shivered and peered
forth to see. Their eyes were as the eyes of the blind!

At last the signal bell rang out staccato. The car suddenly
lurched forward, shaking from side to side the passengers in
their seats. The wheels scraped and began to turn. Almost
at once a more chilling wetness filtered in from the river. In
the invisibility of the fog it seemed that one was travelling
through space, in an aeroplane perhaps, going nobody knew
where.

The murmur of voices buzzed in the smoker, interrupted by
the boisterous outbursts of laughter. A red glare tinted the
fog for a second and disappeared. La Belle was “shooting”
the furnaces. Then a denser darkness and the fog.

The car lurched, scintillating sparks flashed from the trolley
wire, a terrific crash — silence. The lights went out. Before

S^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 91

anybody could think or scream, there came a falling sensation,
such as one experiences when dropped unexpectedly in an ele¬
vator or when diving through the scenic railways of the city
amusements parks, or more exactly when one has nightmare
and dreams of falling, falling, falling.

“The bridge has given way. God! The muddy water!
The fog! Darkness. Death.”

These thoughts flashed spontaneously in the consciousness
of the rough ignorant fellows, choking in the fumes of their
strong tobacco, came to the garlic scented “hunkies,” to the
Italian Madonna, to the Sisters of Charity, to the lover boy
and his lover girl, to the Negro youths, to the Jews thinking
in Yiddish idioms, to the old Negro man and his wife and the
Egyptian-faced girl, with the straightened African hair, even
to the bored motorman and the weary conductor.

< To drown, to strangle, to suffocate, to die! In the dread
silence the words screamed like exploding shells within the
beating temples of terror-stricken passengers and crew.

Then protest, wild, mad, tumultuous, frantic protest. Life
at bay and bellowing furiously against its ancient arch-enemy
and antithesis — Death. An oath, screams — dull, paralyzing,
vomit-stirring nausea. Holy, unexpressed intimacies, deeply
rooted prejudices were roughly shaken from their smug moor-
ings. The Known to be changed for an Unknown, the ever
expected, yet unexpected, Death. No! No! Not that.

Lee Cromarty saw things in that darkness. A plain, one-
story frame house, a slattern woman on the porch, an over¬
grown, large-hipped girl with his face. Then the woman’s
whining, scolding voice and the girl’s bashful confidences.
What was dimming that picture? What cataract was blurring
bis vision? Was it the fog?

To Lafe, leader of the crowd, crouched in his seat, his fingers
clawing the air for a grasping place, came a vision of a hill-side

grave his wife’s — and he saw again how she looked in her
coffin — then the fog.

“I’ll not ^port at the mine,” thought Bill. “Wonder what
fld Bunner will say to that.”

THE O^EW 2(EGR0

The mine foreman’s grizzled face dangled for a second be¬
fore him and was swallowed in the fog.

Hoarse, gasping exhalations. Men, old men, young men,
sobbing. “Pieta! Madre mia! — Mercy, Virgin Mary! My
child!”

No thoughts of fear or pain on the threshold of death, that
shadow from whence all children flow, but all the Mother
Love focused to save the child.

“ Memorare> remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that
never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help and sought thy intercession was left un¬
aided.”

The fingers sped over the beads of the rosary. But looming
up, unerasable, shuttled the kaleidoscope of youth, love, be¬
trayal, renunciation, the vows. Miserere y Jesu !

Life is ever lord of Death

And Love can never lose its own.

The girl was hysterical, weeping, screaming, laughing. Did
the poet dream an idle dream, a false mirage? Death is mas¬
ter. Death is stealing Love away. How could a silly girl
believe or know the calm of poesy?

The boy crumbled. His swagger and bravado melted. The
passionate call of sex became a blur. He was not himself, yet
he was looking at himself, a confusion in space, in night, in
Fog. And who was she hanging limp upon his arm?

That dance? The jazz dance? Ah, the dance! The dance
of Life was ending. The orchestra was playing a dirge and
Death was leading the Grand March. Fog! Impenetrable
fog!

All the unheeded, forgotten warnings of ranting preachers,
all the prayers of simple black mothers, the Mercy-Seat, the
Revival, too late. Terror could give no articulate expression
to these muffled feelings. They came to the surface of a
blunted consciousness, incoherent.

Was there a God in Israel? Laban remembered Russia anc
the pogrom. He had looked into the eyes of Fate that day anc

n CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 93

watched God die with his mother and sisters. Here he was
facing Fate again. There was no answer. He was silent.

His companion sputtered, fumed, screeched. He clung to
Laban in pieces.

Laban remembered the pogrom. The old Negro couple
remembered another horror. They had been through the
riots in Tulsa. There they had lost their son and his wife,
the Egyptian-faced girl’s father and mother. They had heard
the whine of bullets, the hiss of flame, the howling of human
wolves, killing in the most excruciating manner. The water
was silent. The water was merciful.

The old woman began to sing in a high quavering minor
key:

Lawdy, won’t yo’ ketch mah groan,

O Lawdy, Lawdy, won’t yo’ ketch mah groan.

The old man cried out: "Judgment! Judgment!”

The Egyptian-faced girl wept. She was sore afraid, sore
afraid. And the fog was round about them.

Time is a relative term. The philosophers are right for
once. What happened inside the heads of these men and
women seemed to them to have consumed hours instead of
seconds. The conductor mechanically grabbed for the trolley
rope, the motorman threw on the brakes.

The reaction came. Fear may become inarticulate and
paralyzed. Then again it may become belligerent and self-
protective, striking blindly in the maze. Darkness did not
destroy completely the sense of direction.

"The door! The exit!”

A mad rush to get out, not to be trapped without a chance,
like rats in a trap.

Out of my way! Damn you — out of my way!”

Somebody yelled: "Sit still!”

Somebody hissed: "Brutes! Beasts!”

Another concussion, accompanied by the grinding of steel.
The car stopped, lurched backward, swayed, and again stood
still. Excited shouts re-echoed from the ends of the bridge.

94 THE 3^EW S^E'GRO

Automobile horns tooted. An age seemed to pass, but the
great splash did not come. There was still time — maybe.
The car was emptied.

“Run for the Ohio end!” someone screamed.

The fog shut off every man from his neighbor. The
sound of scurrying feet reverberated, of the Italian woman
and her baby, of the boy carrying his girl, of the Negro youths,
of the old man and his wife, half dragging the Egyptian-faced
girl, of the Sisters of Charity, of the miners. Flitting like
wraiths in Homer’s Hades, seeking life.

In a few minutes all were safe on Ohio soil. The bridge still
stood. A street light gave a ghastly glare through the fog.
The whore houses on Water Street brooded evilly in the
shadows. Dogs barked, the Egyptian-faced girl had fainted.
The old Negro woman panted, “Mah Jesus! Mah Jesus!”

The occupants of the deserted car looked at one another.
The icy touch of the Grave began to thaw. There was a gen¬
erous intermingling. Everybody talked at once, inquiring,
congratulating.

“Look after the girl,” shouted Lee Cromarty. “Help the
old woman, boys.”

Bells began to ring. People came running. The ambulance
arrived. The colored girl had recovered. Then everybody
shouted again. Profane miners, used to catastrophe, were
strangely moved. The white boy and girl held hands.

“Sing us a song, old woman,” drawled Lafe.

“He’s heard mah groan. He done heard it,” burst forth
the old woman in a song flood of triumph.

Yes, he conquered Death and Hell,

An’ He never said a mumblm’ word,

Not a word, not a word.

“How you feelin’, Mike,” said Bill to the garlic eater.

“Me fine. Me fine.”

The news of the event spread like wildfire. The street wa;
now crowded. The police arrived. A bridge official appeared
announcing the probable cause of the accident, a slipping oi

J^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 95

certain supports. The girders fortunately had held. A ter¬
rible tragedy had been prevented.

I, I m a wash-foot Baptist an’ I don’t believe in Popery,5*
said Lake, but, fellers, let’s ask them ladies in them air
mournin’ robes to say a prayer of thanksgiving for the bunch.”

The Sisters of Charity did say a prayer, not an audible peti¬
tion for the ears of men, but a whispered prayer for the ears
of God, the Benediction of Thanksgiving, uttered by the

Catholic Church through many years, in many tongues and
places.

“De profundis,” added the silently moving lips of the white-
I faced nuns. “Out of the depths have we cried unto Thee, O
Lord. And Thou hast heard our cries.”

The motorman was no longer dissatisfied. The conductor’s
strength had been renewed like the eagle’s.

“Boys,” drawled Lake, “I’ll be damned if I’m goin’ to that
rneetin’ to-night.”

“Nor me,” affirmed Lee Cromarty.

“Nor me,” repeated all the others.

The fog still crept from under the bed of the river and

iown from the lowering hills of West Virginia— dense,

.enacious, stealthy, chilling, but from about the hearts and

ninds of some rough, unlettered men another fog had begun
0 lift. 6 6

CARMA 1

Jean Toomer

Wind is in the cane. Come along.

Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,

Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,

Wind is in the cane. Come along.

Carma, in overalls, and strong as any man, stands behind
the old brown mule, driving the wagon home. It bumps,
and groans, and shakes as it crosses the railroad track. She,
riding it easy. I leave the men around the stove to follow her
with my eyes down the red dust road. Nigger woman driving
a Georgia chariot down an old dust road. Dixie Pike is what
they call it. Maybe she feels my gaze, perhaps she expects
it. Anyway, she turns. The sun, which has been slanting
over her shoulder, shoots primitive rockets into her mangrove-
gloomed, yellow flower face. Hi! Yip! God has left the
Moses-people for the nigger. “Gedap.” Using reins to slap
the mule, she disappears in a cloudy rumble at some indefinite
point along the road.

(The sun is hammered to a band of gold. Pine-needles,
like mazda, are brilliantly aglow. No rain has come to take
the rustle from the falling sweet-gum leaves. Over in the
forest, across the swamp, a sawmill blows its closing whistle.
Smoke curls up. Marvellous web spun by the spider sawdust
pile. Curls up and spreads itself pine-high above the branch,
a single silver band along the eastern valley. A black boy
. . . you are the most sleepiest man I ever seed, Sleeping
Beauty . . . cradled on a gray mule, guided by the hollow
sound of cowbells, heads for them through a rusty cotton field.
From down the railroad track, the chug-chug of a gas engine
announces that the repair gang is coming home. A girl in the

1 From Cane.

P(EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 97

yard of a whitewashed shack not much larger than the stack
of worn ties piled before it, sings. Her voice is loud. Echoes,
like rain, sweep the valley. Dusk takes the polish from
the rails. Lights twinkle in scattered houses. From far away,
a sad strong song. Pungent and composite, the smell of farm¬
yards is the fragrance of the woman. She does not sing; her
body is a song. She is in the forest, dancing. Torches flare
. . juju men, greegree, witch-doctors . . . torches go out . .
The Dixie Pike has grown from a goat path in Africa.

Night.

Foxie, the bitch, slicks back her ears and barks at the rising
moon.)

Wind is in the corn. Come along.

Corn leaves swaying, rusty with talk,

Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,

Wind is in the corn. Come along.

Carma’s tale is the crudest melodrama. Her husband’s in the
gang. And it’s her fault he got there. Working with a con¬
tractor, he was away most of the time. She had others. No
one blames her for that. He returned one day and hung
around the town where he picked up week-old boasts and
rumors. . . . Bane accused her. She denied. He couldn’t
see that she was becoming hysterical. He would have liked to
take his fists and beat her. Who was strong as a man. Stronger.
Words, like corkscrews, wormed to her strength. It fizzled
out. Grabbing a gun, she rushed from the house and plunged
across the road into a cane-brake. . . . There, in quarter
heaven shone the crescent moon. . . . Bane was afraid to fol¬
low till he heard the gun go off. Then he wasted half an hour
gathering the neighbor men. They met in the road where
lamp-light showed tracks dissolving in the loose earth about
the cane. The search began. Moths flickered the lamps. They
put them out. Really, because she still might be live enough
to shoot. Time and space have no meaning in a canefield.

98 THE C^EW R^EGRO

No more than the interminable stalks. . . . Someone stumbled
over her. A cry went up. From the road, one would have
thought that they were cornering a rabbit or a skunk. ... It
is difficult carrying dead weight through cane. They placed
her on the sofa. A curious, nosey somebody looked for the
wound. This fussing with her clothes aroused her. Her
eyes were weak and pitiable for so strong a woman. Slowly,
then like a flash, Bane came to know that the shot she fired,
with averted head, was aimed to whistle like a dying hornet
through the cane. Twice deceived, — and one deception proved
the other. His head went off. Slashed one of the men who’d
helped, the man who’d stumbled over her. Now he’s in the
gang. Who was her husband. Should she not take others,
this Carma, strong as a man, whose tale as I have told it is
the crudest melodrama?

Wind is in the cane. Come along.

Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,

Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,

Wind is in the cane. Come along.

FERN1

Jean Toomer

Face flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and
plaintive ripples, in such a way that wherever your glance may
momentarily have rested, it immediately thereafter wavered
in the direction of her eyes. The soft suggestion of down
slightly darkened, like the shadow of a bird’s wing might,
the creamy brown color of her upper lip. Why, after noticing
it, you sought her eyes, I cannot tell you. Her nose was
aquiline, Semitic. If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing,
if he has touched you and made your own sorrow seem
trivial when compared with his, you will know my feeling
when I follow the curves of her profile, like mobile rivers,
to their common delta. They were strange eyes. In this,
that they sought nothing — that is, nothing that was obvious
and tangible and that one could see, and they gave the im¬
pression that nothing was to be denied. When a woman seeks,
you will have observed, her eyes deny. Fern’s eyes desired
nothing that you could give her; there was no reason why
they should withhold. Men saw her eyes and fooled them¬
selves. Fern’s eyes said to them that she was easy. When
she was young, a few men took her, but got no joy from it.
And then, once done, they felt bound to her (quite unlike
their hit and run with other girls), felt as though it would
take them a lifetime to fulfill an obligation which they could
find no name for. They became attached to her, and hun¬
gered after finding the barest trace of what she might de¬
sire. As she grew up, new men who came to town felt as
almost everyone did who ever saw her: that they would not
be denied. Men were everlastingly bringing her their bodies.
Something inside of her got tired of them, I guess, for I am
1 From Cane.

100

THE ^EW NiEGRO

certain that for the life of her she could not tell why or how
she began to turn them off. A man in fever is no trifling thing
to send away. They began to leave her, baffled and ashamed,
yet vowing to themselves that some day they would do some
fine thing for her: send her candy every week and not let her
know whom it came from, watch out for her wedding-day and
give her a magnificent something with no name on it, buy a
house and deed it to her, rescue her from some unworthy
fellow who had tricked her into marrying him. As you know,
men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot under¬
stand, especially if it be a woman. She did not deny them,
yet the fact was that they were denied. A sort of superstition
crept into their consciousness of her being somehow above them.
Being above them meant that she was not to be approached by
anyone. She became a virgin. Now a virgin in a small
southern town is by no means the usual thing, if you will be¬
lieve me. That the sexes were made to mate is the practice of
the South. Particularly, black folks were made to mate. And
it is black folks whom I have been talking about thus far.
What white men thought of Fern I can arrive at only by
analogy. They let her alone.

Anyone, of course, could see her, could see her eyes. If
you walked up the Dixie Pike most any time of day, you’d be
most like to see her resting listless-like on the railing of her
porch, back propped against a post, head tilted a little forward
because there was a nail in the porch post just where her head
came which for some reason or other she never took the
trouble to pull out. Her eyes, if it were sunset, rested idly
where the sun, molten and glorious, was pouring down between
the fringe of pines. Or maybe they gazed at the gray cabin
on the knoll from which an evening folk-song was coming.
Perhaps they followed a cow that had been turned loose to
roam and feed on cotton-stalks and corn leaves. Like as not
they’d settle on some vague spot above the horizon, though
hardly a trace of wistfulness would come to them. If it were
dusk, then they’d wait for the search-light of the evening
train which you could see miles up the track before it flared

Jean Toomer

IOI

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

across the Dixie Pike, close to her home. Wherever they
looked, you’d follow them and then waver back. Like her
face, the whole countryside seemed to flow into her eyes.
Flowed into them with the soft listless cadence of Georgia’s
South. A young Negro, once, was looking at her, spellbound,
from the road. A white man passing in a buggy had to flick
him with his whip if he was to get by without running him
over. I first saw her on her porch. I was passing with a
fellow whose crusty numbness (I was from the North and
suspected of being prejudiced and stuck-up) was melting as he
found me warm. I asked him who she was. “That’s Fern,”
was all that I could get from him. Some folks already thought
that I was given to nosing around ; I let it go at that, so far
as questions were concerned. But at first sight of her I felt
as if I heard a Jewish cantor sing. As if his singing rose above
the unheard chorus of a folk-song. And I felt bound to her.
I too had my dreams: something I would do for her. I have
knocked about from town to town too much not to know the
futility of mere change of place. Besides, picture if you can,
this cream-colored solitary girl sitting at a tenement window
looking down on the indifferent throngs of Harlem. Better
that she listen to folk-songs at dusk in Georgia, you would say,
and so would I. Or, suppose she came up North and married.
Even a doctor or a lawyer, say, one who would be sure to
get along — that is, make money. You and I know, who
have had experience in such things, that love is not a
thing like prejudice which can be bettered by changes
of town. Could men in Washington, Chicago, or New York,
more than the men of Georgia, bring her something left vacant
by the bestowal of their bodies? You and I who know men
in these cities will have to say, they could not. See her out and
out a prostitute along State Street in Chicago. See her move
into a southern town where white men are more aggressive.
See her become a white man’s concubine. . . . Something I
must do for her. There was myself. What could I do for
her? Talk, of course. Push back the fringe of pines upon
new horizons. To what purpose? and what for? Her? My¬
self? Men in her case seem to lose their selfishness. I lost

102

THE J\ CEW Z^EGRO

mine before I touched her. I ask you, friend (it makes no
difference if you sit in the Pullman or the Jim Crow as the
train crosses her road), what thoughts would come to you —
that is, after you’d finished with the thoughts that leap into
men’s minds at the sight of a pretty woman who will not
deny them; what thoughts would come to you, had you seen
her in a quick flash, keen and intuitively, as she sat there on
her porch when your train thundered by? Would you have
got off at the next station and come back for her to take
her where? Would you have completely forgotten her as soon
as you reached Macon, Atlanta, Augusta, Pasadena, Madison,
Chicago, Boston, or New Orleans? Would you tell your wife
or sweetheart about a girl you saw? Your thoughts can help
me, and I would like to know. Something I would do for
her. . . .

One evening I walked up the Pike on purpose, and stopped
to say hello. Some of her family were about, but they moved
away to make room for me. Damn if I knew how to begin.
Would you? Mr. and Miss So-and-So, people, the weather,
the crops, the new preacher, the frolic, the church benefit, rab¬
bit and possum hunting, the new soft drink they had at old
Pap’s store, the schedule of the trains, what kind of town
Macon was, Negro’s migration north, boll-weevils, syrup, the
Bible — to all these things she gave a yassur or nassur, without
further comment. I began to wonder if perhaps my own
emotional sensibility had played one of its tricks on me. “Let’s
take a walk,” I at last ventured. The suggestion, coming after
so long an isolation, was novel enough, I guess, to surprise.
But it wasn’t that. Something told me that men before me
had said just that as a prelude to the offering of their bodies.
I tried to tell her with my eyes. I think she understood. The
thing from her that made my throat catch, vanished. Its pass¬
ing left her visible in a way I’d thought, but never seen. We
walked down the Pike with people on all the porches gaping
at us. “Doesn’t it make you mad?” She meant the row of
petty gossiping people. She meant the world. Through a
canebrake that was ripe for cutting, the branch was reached.

ViEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 103

Under a sweet-gum tree, and where reddish leaves had dammed
the creek a little, we sat down. Dusk, suggesting the almost
imperceptible procession of giant trees, settled with a purple
haze about the cane. I felt strange, as I always do in Georgia,
particularly at dusk. I felt that things unseen to men were
tangibly immediate. It would not have surprised me had I
had vision. People have them in Georgia more often than
you would suppose. A black woman once saw the mother
of Christ and drew her in charcoal on the courthouse wall. . . .
When one is on the soil of one’s ancestors, most anything can
come to one. . . . From force of habit, I suppose, I held Fern
in my arms — that is, without at first noticing it. Then my mind
came back to her. Her eyes, unusually weird and open, held
me. Held God. He flowed in as I’ve seen the countryside
flow in. Seen men. I must have done something — what, I
don’t know, in the confusion of my emotion. She sprang up.
Rushed some distance from me. Fell to her knees, and began
swaying, swaying. Her body was tortured with something it
could not let out. Like boiling sap it flooded arms and fingers
till she shook them as if they burned her. It found her
throat, and spattered inarticulately in plaintive, convulsive
sounds, mingled with calls to Christ Jesus. And then she sang,
brokenly. A Jewish cantor singing with a broken voice. A
child’s voice, uncertain, or an old man’s. Dusk hid her; I
could hear only her song. It seemed to me as though she
were pounding her head in anguish upon the ground. I rushed
to her. She fainted in my arms.

There was talk about her fainting with me in the cane-
field. And I got one or two ugly looks from town men who’d
set themselves up to protect her. In fact, there was talk of
making me leave town. But they never did. They kept a
watch-out for me, though. Shortly after, I came back North.
From the train window I saw her as I crossed her road. Saw
her on her porch, head tilted a little forward where the nail
was, eyes vaguely focused on the sunset. Saw her face flow
into them, the countryside and something that I call God,
flowing into them. . . . Nothing ever really happened. Noth-

104

THE EW O^EGRO

mg ever came to Fern, not even I. Something I would do for
her. Some fine unnamed thing. . . . And, friend, you?
She is still living, I have reason to know. Her name, against
the chance that you might happen down that way, is Fernie
May Rosen.

SPUNK1

Zora Neale Hurston

A giant of a brown-skinned man sauntered up the one street
of the Village and out into the palmetto thickets with a small
pretty woman clinging lovingly to his arm.

“Looka theah, folkses!” cried Elijah Mosley, slapping his
leg gleefully. “Theah they go, big as life an5 brassy as
tacks.”

All the loungers in the store tried to walk to the door with an
air of nonchalance but with small success.

“Now pee-eople!” Walter Thomas gasped. “Will you look
at ’em!”

“But that’s one thing Ah likes about Spunk Banks — he ain’t
skeered of nothin’ on God’s green footstool — nothin'! He
rides that log down at saw-mill jus’ like he struts ’round wid
another man’s wife — jus’ don’t give a kitty. When Tes’ Miller
got cut to giblets on that circle-saw, Spunk steps right up and
starts ridin’. The rest of us was skeered to go near it.”

A round-shouldered figure in overalls much too large, came
nervously in the door and the talking ceased. The men looked
at each other and winked.

“Gimme some soda-water. Sass’prilla Ah reckon,” the new¬
comer ordered, and stood far down the counter near the open
pickled pig-feet tub to drink it.

Elijah nudged Walter and turned with mock gravity to
the new-comer.

“Say, Joe, how’s everything up yo’ way? How’s yo’ wife?”

Joe started and all but dropped the bottle he held in his
hands. He swallowed several times painfully and his lips
trembled.

“Aw ’Lige, you oughtn’t to do nothin’ like that,” Walter
grumbled. Elijah ignored him.

1 Awarded second prize, Opportunity contest, 1925.

105

10 6 THE ViEW V^EGRO

“She jus’ passed heah a few minutes ago goin’ thata way,”
with a wave of his hand in the direction of the woods.

Now Joe knew his wife had passed that way. He knew that
the men lounging in the general store had seen her, moreover,
he knew that the men knew he knew. He stood there silent
for a long moment staring blankly, with his Adam’s apple
twitching nervously up and down his throat. One could ac¬
tually see the pain he was suffering, his eyes, his face, his
hands and even the dejected slump of his shoulders. He set
the bottle down upon the counter. He didn’t bang it, just
eased it out of his hand silently and fiddled with his suspender
buckle.

“Well, Ah’m goin’ after her to-day. Ah’m goin’ an’ fetch
her back. Spunk’s done gone too fur.”

He reached deep down into his trouser pocket and drew out
a hollow ground razor, large and shiny, and passed his mois¬
tened thumb back and forth over the edge.

“Talkin’ like a man, Joe. Course that’s yo} fambly affairs,
but Ah like to see grit in anybody.”

Joe Kanty laid down a nickel and stumbled out into the
street.

Dusk crept in from the woods. Ike Clarke lit the swinging-
oil lamp that was almost immediately surrounded by candle-
flies. The men laughed boisterously behind Joe’s back as they
watched him shamble woodward.

“You oughtn’t to said whut you did to him, Lige — look how
it worked him up,” Walter chided.

“And Ah hope it did work him up. ’Tain’t even decent for
a man to take and take like he do.”

“Spunk will sho’ kill him.”

“Aw, Ah doan’t know. You never kin tell. He might
turn him up an’ spank him fur gettin’ in the way, but Spunk
wouldn’t shoot no unarmed man. Dat razor he carried outa
heah ain’t gonna run Spunk down an’ cut him, an’ Joe ain’t
got the nerve to go up to Spunk with it knowing he totes that
Army .45. He makes that break outa heah to bluff us. He’s
gonna hide that razor behind the first likely palmetto root an’
sneak back home to bed. Don’t tell me nothin’ ’bout that

107

M. *

NEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

rabbit-foot colored man. Didn’t he meet Spunk an’ Lena face
to face one day las’ week an’ mumble sumthin’ to Spunk ’bout
lettin’ his wife alone?”

“What did Spunk say?” Walter broke in — “Ah like him
fine but ’tain’t right the way he carries on wid Lena Kanty,
jus’ cause Joe’s timid ’bout fightin’.”

“You wrong theah, Walter. ’Tain’t cause Joe’s timid at
all, it’s cause Spunk wants Lena. If Joe was a passle of wile
cats Spunk would tackle the job just the same. He’d go after
anything he wanted the same way. As Ah wuz sayin’ a min¬
ute ago, he tole Joe right to his face that Lena was his. ‘Call
her,’ he says to Joe. ‘Call her and see if she’ll come. A
woman knows her boss an’ she answers when he calls.’ ‘Lena,
ain’t I yo’ husband?’ Joe sorter whines out. Lena looked at
him real disgusted but she don’t answer and she don’t move
outa her tracks. Then Spunk reaches out an’ takes hold of
her arm an’ says: ‘Lena, youse mine. From now on Ah works
for you an’ fights for you an’ Ah never wants you to look to
nobody for a crumb of bread, a stitch of close or a shingle to
go over yo’ head, but me long as Ah live. Ah’ll git the lumber
foh owah house to-morrow. Go home an’ git yo’ things to¬
gether!’

“ ‘Thass mah house,’ Lena speaks up. ‘Papa gimme that.’

“ ‘Well,’ says Spunk, ‘doan give up whut’s yours, but when
youse inside don’t forgit youse mine, an’ let no other man git
outa his place wid you!’

“Lena looked up at him with her eyes so full of love that
they wuz runnin’ over, an’ Spunk seen it an’ Joe seen it too, and
his lip started to tremblin’ and his Adam’s apple was galloping
up and down his neck like a race horse. Ah bet he’s wore
out half a dozen Adam’s apples since Spunk’s been on the
job with Lena. That’s all he’ll do. He’ll be back heah after
while swallowin’ an’ workin’ his lips like he wants to say
somethin’ an’ can’t.”

“But didn’t he do nothin' to stop ’em?”

“Nope, not a frazzlin’ thing — jus’ stood there. Spunk took
Lena’s arm and walked off jus’ like nothin’ ain’t happened and
he stood there gazin’ after them till they was outa sight. Now

io8

THE C^EW CNiEGRO

you know a woman don’t want no man like that. I’m jus’
waitin’ to see whut he’s goin’ to say when he gits back.”

But Joe Kanty never came back, never. The men in the
store heard the sharp report of a pistol somewhere distant in
the palmetto thicket and soon Spunk came walking leisurely,
with his big black Stetson set at the same rakish angle and Lena
clinging to his arm, came walking right into the general store.

Lena wept in a frightened manner.

“Well,” Spunk announced calmly, “Joe come out there wid

a meatax an’ made me kill him.”

He sent Lena home and led the men back to Joe — Joe
crumpled and limp with his right hand still clutching his

raz°r.

“See mah back? Mah does cut clear through. He sneaked
up an’ tried to kill me from the back, but Ah got him, an got
him good, first shot,” Spunk said.

The men glared at Elijah, accusingly.

“Take him up an’ plant him in ‘Stoney lonesome,’ ” Spunk
said in a careless voice. “Ah didn’t wanna shoot him but he
made me do it. He’s a dirty coward, jumpin’ on a man from

behind.”

Spunk turned on his heel and sauntered away to where he
knew his love wept in fear for him and no man stopped him.
At the general store later on, they all talked of locking him
up until the sheriff should come from Orlando, but no one did
anything but talk.

A clear case of self-defense, the trial was a short one, and
Spunk walked out of the court house to freedom again. He
could work again, ride the dangerous log-carriage that fed
the singing, snarling, biting, circle-saw; he could stroll the
soft dark lanes with his guitar. He was free to roam the woods
again; he was free to return to Lena. He did all of these

things.

y(EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

109

“Whut you reckon, Walt?” Elijah asked one night later.
“Spunk’s gittin’ ready to marry Lena!”

. “Naw! Why, Joe ain’t had time to git cold yit. Nohow Ah
didn’t figger Spunk was the marryin’ kind.”

“Well, he is,” rejoined Elijah. “He done moved most of
Lena’s things — and her along wid ’em — over to the Bradley
house. He’s buying it. Jus’ like Ah told yo’ all right in heah
the night Joe wuz kilt. Spunk’s crazy ’bout Lena. He don’t
want folks to keep on talkin’ ’bout her — thass reason he’s rushin’
so. Funny thing ’bout that bob-cat, wan’t it?”

“What bob-cat, ’Lige? Ah ain’t heered ’bout none.”

“Ain’t cher? Well, night befo’ las’ was the fust night Spunk
an’ Lena moved together an’ jus’ as they was goin’ to bed, a
big black bob-cat, black all over, you hear me, black , walked
round and round that house and howled like forty, an’ when
Spunk got his gun an’ went to the winder to shoot it, he says
it stood right still an’ looked him in the eye, an’ howled right
at him. Xhe thing got Spunk so nervoused up he couldn’t
shoot. But Spunk says twan’t no bob-cat nohow. He says it
was Joe done sneaked back from Hell!”

“Humph!” sniffed Walter, “he oughter be nervous after
what he done. Ah reckon Joe come back to dare him to marry
Lena, or to come out an’ fight. Ah bet he’ll be back time
and agin, too. Know what Ah think? Joe wuz a braver man
than Spunk.”

There was a general shout of derision from the group.

“Thass a fact,” went on Walter. “Lookit whut he done;
took a razor an’ went out to fight a man he knowed toted a gun
an’ wuz a crack shot, too; ’nother thing Joe wuz skeered of
Spunk, skeered plumb stiff! But he went jes’ the same. It
took him a long time to get his nerve up. ’Tain’t nothin’ for
Spunk to fight when he ain’t skeered of nothin’. Now, Joe’s
done come back to have it out wid the man that’s got all he
ever had. Y’ll know Joe ain’t never had nothin’ nor wanted
nothin’ besides Lena. It musta been a h’ant cause ain’ nobody
never seen no black bob-cat.”

THE C^EW CMiEGRO

“ ’Nother thing,” cut in one of the men, “Spunk wuz cussin’
a blue streak to-day ’cause he ’lowed dat saw wuz wobblin’ —
almos’ got ’im once. The machinist come, looked it over an’
said it wuz alright. Spunk musta been leanin’ t’wards it some.
Den he claimed somebody pushed ’im but ’twant nobody close
to ’im. Ah wuz glad when knockin’ off time come. I’m
skeered of dat man when he gits hot. He’d beat you full of
button holes as quick as he’s look atcher.”

The men gathered the next evening in a different mood, no
laughter. No badinage this time.

“Look, ’Lige, you goin’ to set up wid Spunk?”

“Naw, Ah reckon not, Walter. Tell yuh the truth, Ah’m
a lil bit skittish. Spunk died too wicket — died cussin’ he did.
You know he thought he wuz done outa life.”

“Good Lawd, who’d he think done it?”

“Joe.”

“Joe Kanty? How come?”

“Walter, Ah b’leeve Ah will walk up thata way an’ set.
Lena would like it Ah reckon.”

“But whut did he say, ’Lige?”

Elijah did not answer until they had left the lighted store
and were strolling down the dark street.

“Ah wuz loadin’ a wagon wid scantlin’ right near the saw
when Spunk fell on the carriage but ’fore Ah could git to him
the saw got him in the body — awful sight. Me an’ Skint Mil¬
ler got him off but it was too late. Anybody could see that.
The fust thing he said wuz: ‘He pushed me, ’Lige — the dirty
hound pushed me in the back!’ — He was spittin’ blood at ev’ry
breath. We laid him on the sawdust pile with his face to the
East so’s he could die easy. He helt mah han’ till the last,
Walter, and said: ‘It was Joe, ’Lige — the dirty sneak shoved
me ... he didn’t dare come to mah face . . . but Ah’ll git
the son-of-a-wood louse soon’s Ah get there an’ make hell too
hot for him. . . . Ah felt him shove me. . . !’ Thass how
he died.” •

Ill

NEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

“If spirits kin fight, there’s a powerful tussle goin’ on some¬
where ovah Jordan ’cause Ah b’leeve Joe’s ready for Spunk
an’ ain’t skeered any more — yas, Ah b’leeve Joe pushed ’im
mahself.”

They had arrived at the house. Lena’s lamentations were
deep and loud. She had filled the room with magnolia blos¬
soms that gave off a heavy sweet odor. The keepers of the
wake tipped about whispering in frightened tones. Everyone
in the village was there, even old Jeff Kanty, Joe’s father,
who a few hours before would have been afraid to come within
ten feet of him, stood leering triumphantly down upon the
fallen giant as if his fingers had been the teeth of steel that
laid him low.

The cooling board consisted of three sixteen-inch boards on
saw horses, a dingy sheet was his shroud.

The women ate heartily of the funeral baked meats and
wondered who would be Lena’s next. The men whispered
coarse conjectures between guzzles of whiskey.

SAHDJI

Bruce Nugent

That one now .... that’s a sketch of a little African girl
. . . delightfully black ... I made it while I was passing
through East Africa . . . her name was Sahdji . . . wife of
Konombju . . . chieftain ... of only a small tribe . . .
Warpuri was the area of his sovereign domain . . . but to get
back to Sahdji . . . with her beautiful dark body . . .rosy
black . . . graceful as the tongues of flame she loved to dance
around . . . and pretty . . . small features .... large liquid
eyes . . . over-full sensuous lips . . . she knew how to dance

too . . . better than any .

Sahdji was proud . . . she was the favorite wife ... as
such she had privileges . . . she did love Konombju. . .

Mrabo . . . son of Konombju, loved Sahdji ... his
father . . fifty-nine .... too old for her . . . fifty-nine
and eighteen ... he could wait ... he loved his father
. . . but .... maybe death ... his father was getting
old .

Numbo idolized Mrabo . . . Numbo was a young buck
.... would do anything to make Mrabo happy. . . .

one day Sahdji felt restless . . . why ... it was not un¬
usual for Konombju to lead the hunt . . . even at his age
. . . Sahdji jangled her bracelets ... it was so still and
warm . . . she’d wait at the door .... standing there . . .
shifting ... a blurred silhouette against the brown of the
hut . . . she waited . . . waited. . .

maybe . . .

she saw the long steaming stream of natives in the distance
. . . she looked for Konombju . . what was that burden
they carried . . . why were they so solemn . . . where was
Konombju. . . .

the column reached her door . . . placed their burden at
her feet . . . Konombju . an arrow in his back . . .

1 14 THE y^EW 3\ CEGRO

just accident . . . Goare go shuioa go elui run — (when men
die they depart for ever) — they hadn’t seen him fall . . hunt¬
ing, one watches the hunt ... a stray arrow . . . Konombju
at her feet. . .

preparations for the funeral feast ... the seven wives of
Konombju went to the new chief’s hut . . . Mrabo . . . one
. . two . . three . . he counted ... no Sahdji . . .six . .
seven . . no Sahdji. . .

the funeral procession filed past the door . . . and Mrabo
. . . Mrabo went too . . the drums beat their boom . . boom
. . . deep pulsing heart-quivering boom . . . and the reeds
added their weird dirge . . . the procession moved on . . .
on to Konombju’s hut . . . boom . . b-o-o-m .

there from the doorway stepped Sahdji . . . painted in the
funeral red . . . the flames from the ground are already catch¬
ing the branches . . . slowly to the funeral drums she swayed
. . . danced . . . leading Konombju to his grave . . . her
grave . . . their grave. . .

they laid the body in the funeral hut . . . Goa shoa motho
go sale motho — (when a man dies a man remains) — Sahdji
danced slowly . . . sadly . . . looked at Mrabo and smiled . . .
slowly triumphantly . . . and to the wails of the wives . . .
boom-boom of the drums . . . gave herself again to Ko¬
nombju . . . the grass-strewn couch of Konombju. . . .

Mrabo stood unflinching . . . but Numbo, silly Numbo
had made an old . . old man of Mrabo.

THE PALM PORCH

Eric Walrond

Nobody had ever heard of Miss Buckner before she swept
into The Palm Porch. The Palm Porch was not a cantine;
it was a house. Still, one was not sure of that, either 5 for a
house, assuredly, is a place where people live. But Miss Buck¬
ner did not only live there: she had cut up the house in small,
single rooms, each in separate and distinct entities. Each had
its armor of leafy laces, its hangings of mauve and cream-
gold; each its loadstones and daggers; its glowing dust and
scarlet. Each its wine and music, powders and mirrors.

High against the sky, on slender, ant-proof poles, The Palm
Porch looked down upon the squalid cosmos of Colon. Fac¬
ing north — a broad expanse of red, arid land.

Before the Revolution it was a black, evil forest-swamp.
Deer, lions, mongooses and tiger cats went prowling through
it. Then the Americans came . . . came with saw and spear,
tar and lysol. About to rid it . . . molten city ... of its
cancer, fire swept it up on the bosom of the lagoon. Naked,
virgin trees; limbless. Gaunt, hollow stalks. Huge shadows
falling. Dredges in the golden mist; dredges on the lagoon.
Horny iron pipes spouted over the fetid swamp. Noise; grat¬
ing noise. Earth stones, up from the bowels of the sea, rat¬
tled against the ribs of scaly pipes like popping corn. Crackling
corn. Water, red, black, gray, gushed out of big, bursting
pipes. For miles people heard its lap-lapping. Dark as the
earth, it flung up on its crest stones, pearls, sharks’ teeth . . .
jewels of the sunken sea. Frogs, vermin, tangled things. . . .

It browned into a lake of dazzling corals. Slowly the sun
began to sop, harden, dry it up. Upon its surface, buoying it,
old tree stumps; guava, pine. On them snipes flew. Wild
geese came low, dipping up an earth-burned sprat. Off again.

115

ii 6

THE J(EW R^EGRO

River stakes. Venturing to explore it enterprising kids would
slip through . . . plop ... go down . . . seized by the in¬
tense suction. Ugly rescue work.

In time it gave in to the insistence of the sun. White and
golden husks shone upon it. Shells ; half-shells. It cut,
dazed and dazzled you. Queer things, half-seen, on the dry,
salty earth. Ghastly white bones ; skulls, ear-rings, bangles.
Scrambling. Rows. Sea-scum fought and slew each other
over them.

As time went on it became a bare, vivid plain. City’d soon
spring upon it. Of a Sunday blacks would skip over to the
beach to bathe or pick cocoanuts on the banks of the lagoon.
On the lagoon ... a slaughter house and a wireless station.
Squeaking down at the flat, low city. Pigs being stuck, the
unseeing hoofs of cattle . . . the wireless . . f

tang ta-tang, tang ta-tang

stole out of the meridian dusk.

Upon the lake of sea-earth, dusk swept a mantle of majestic
coloring.

East of The Palm Porch, roared the city of Colon. Hudson
Alley, “G” Street . . . coolies, natives, Island blacks swarm¬
ing to the Canal. All about, nothing but tenements . . . city
word for cabins . . . low, soggy, toppling.

Near the sky rose the Ant’s Nest. Six stories high and it
took up half a city block. One rickety staircase ... in the
rear. No two of its rooms connected. Each sheltered a family
of eight or nine. A balcony ringed each floor. Rooms . . •
each room . . . opened out upon it. Only one person at a
time dared walk along any point of it. The cages of voice¬
less yellow birds adorned each window. Boards were stretched
at the bottom of doors to stop kids from wandering out . . .
to the piazza below. Flower-pots . . . fern, mint, thyme,
parsley, water cress ... sat on the scum-moist sills of the
balconies.

Over the hot, low city the Ant’s Nest lorded it. Reared its
mouth to the heavens. Sneered truculently at it. Offensive,

P(EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 117

muggy, habitation made it giddy, bilious. Swarms of black
folk populated it. . . .

Sorry lot. Tugging at the apron strings of life, scabrous,
sore-footed natives, spouting saliva into unisolated cisterns.
Naked on the floors Chinese rum shops and chow-stands. Nig¬
ger-loving Chinks unmoved and unafraid of the consequences
of a breed of untarnished . . . seemingly . . . Asiatics grow¬
ing up around the breasts of West Indian maidens. Pious
English peasant blacks . . . perforating the picture . . . go¬
ing to church, to lodge meetings, to hear fiery orations.

Ant’s Nest. On one hand the Ant’s Nest. On the other,
the sand-gilt lake. In this fashion it was not an unexpected
rarity to find The Palm Porch prospering. Austerely en¬
trenched, the rooms on the ground floor went to a one-eyed
baboo and a Panama witch doctor. Gates at the top of the
stairs kept intruders off. A wolf hound insured the logic of
the precaution.

Around the porch Miss Buckner had unsheathed a strip of
bright enamel cloth. From a man’s waist it rose to the roof.
It was beyond reason for anyone to peep up from the piazza
and see what was taking place up there. Of course there were
iron bars below the white screen, but Miss Buckner had covered
these with crates of fern and violets strung along it. In addi¬
tion, Miss Buckner had not been without an eye to a certain
tropical exactness.

About Miss Buckner the idea of surfeit . . . oxen hips,
long, pliable hands, roving, sun-staring breasts . . .took on
the magic of reality. Upon the yellow stalk of her being there
shot up into mist and crystal space a head the shape of a sawed-
off cocoanut tree top. Pressed close to its rim were tiny
wrinkles . . . circles, circlets, half-circles ... of black, crisp
hair. It was even bobbed ... an unheard of proceeding
among the Victorian maidens of the Indian tropics. Unheard
of, indeed.

Further to confound the canaille a heretical part slid down
the front of it. Strangely anti-sexual, it helped, too, to create
a brightly sodden air about Miss Buckner in the ramified circles
in which she set her being.

1 1 8

THE ViEW 3\ CEGRO

Urged on by the ruthless, crushing spirit which was firmly
and innately a part of her, Miss Buckner, consciously unaware
of the capers she was cutting amid the synthetic hordes . . .
black, brown, yellow folk . . . had, perhaps, a right to insist
on such things as a frizzly head of hair. Perhaps to her it was
a trivial item of concern — to her and her only. And, by way
of sprucing up lagging ends in her native endowments, items
such as wavy, sylvan tresses, or a slim, pretty figure, Miss
Buckner had .an approach to one . . . life . . . that was sim¬
ply excruciating. Where, oh! where, folk asked, did she ac¬
quire it? London . . . Paris . . . Vienna? No! In reality
Miss Buckner, a dame of sixty — it was the first time that
she had deserted the isle of her birth in an animated raffle across
the sea, — would have fallen ill at the very suggestion of having
to go to Europe or anywhere in fact beyond the crimson rim
of Jamaica in quest of manners. Absurd!

And so, like a bit of tape, this manner to Miss Buckner
stuck. Upon women Miss Buckner had meager cause to ply
it, for at The Palm Porch precious few women, except, of
course, Zuline, her Surinam cook, and, of course, her five
daughters, were ever allowed. It was a man’s house. When,
as a result, Miss Buckner, beneath a brilliant lorgnette, con¬
descended to look at a man, she looked sternly, unsmilingly
down at him. When, of a Sabbath, Miss Buckner, hair in
oily, overt frills, maidenly in a silken shawl of gold and blue,
a dab of carmine on her mouth, decided to go to the mercado ,
followed by the slow, trepid steps of Zuline, to buy achi and
Lucy-yam and cocoa-milk and red peas, she had half of the
city gaping at the very wonder of her. Erratically, entirely in
command of herself, Miss Buckner, by a word or gesture . . .
quick, stabbing, petulant . . . would outbuy a deftly-en¬
shrined Assyrian candymaker, the most abject West Indian
fish dealer or the meekest native vendor of cebada. Colorful
as a pheasant, she swept on, through the mist of crawling folk,
the comely Zuline at her elbow, plying her with queries surely
she did not expect her to possess enough virginity to answer.
Dumping as she swept along vegetables, meats, spices in the
bewildered girl’s basket. Her head high above the dusky mob,

S^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 119

her voice, at best a thing of angel-colors, uncaught by the
shreds of patois going by her.

In fact, from Colon to Cocoa Grove, Miss Buckner, by the
color-crazed folk who swam head-high in the bowl of luring
life stirred by her, was a woman to tip one’s hat to — regal rite —
a woman of taste, culture, value. Executives at Balboa,
pilots on the locks, sun-burned sea folk attested to that. They
gloried at the languor of Miss Buckner’s salon.

Of course, by words that came flashing like meteors out of
Miss Buckner’s mouth, one got the impression that Miss Buck¬
ner would have liked to be white ; but, alas! she was only a
mulatto. No one had ever heard of her before she and her
innocent darlings moved into The Palm Porch. Of course, it
was to be expected, the world being what it is, that there were
people who — De la Croix, a San Andres wine merchant, De
Pass, a Berbice horse breeder — murmured words of treason:
that, out of their roving lives they’d seen her at a certain Bar
in Matches Lane stringing out from over a broad, clean counter
words of rigid cheer to the colonizing English barque men . . .
but such, too, were cast to the dogs to be devoured as expres¬
sions of useless and undocumented chatter. Whether the re¬
sult of a union of white and Negro, French or Spanish, English
or Maroon ... no one knew. And her daughters, sculptural
marvels of gold and yellow, were enshrined in a similar mys¬
tery. Of their father and their ascension to the luxury of one,
the least heard, so far as the buzzing community was con¬
cerned, the better. And in the absence of data tongues began
to wag. Norwegian bos’en. Jamaica lover . . . Island
trumph. Crazy Kingston nights. . . . To the charming ladies
in question, it was a subject of adoring indifference. Miss
Buckner herself, who had a contempt for statistics, was a trifle
hazy about the whole thing. . . .

One of the girls, white as a white woman, eyes blue as a
Viking maid’s, strangely, at sixteen, had eloped, much to Miss
Buckner’s disgust, with a shiny-armed black who at one time
had been sent to the Island jail for the proletarian crime of
predial larceny. Neighbors swore it was love at first sight.
But it irked, piqued Miss Buckner. “It a dam’ pity shame,”

120

THE O^EW T^EGRO

she had cried, between dabs at her already cologne-choked nose,
“it a dam’ pity shame.”

Another girl, the eldest of the lot (Miss Buckner had had
seven in all), had oh! ages before given birth to a pretty, gray¬
eyed baby boy, when she was but seventeen, and, much to Miss
Buckner’s disgrace, had later taken up with a willing young
mulatto, a Christian in the Moravian church, and brutishly
undertaken the burdens of concubinage. He was able, honest,
industrious and wore shoes, but Miss Buckner nearly went mad
— groaned at the pain her wayward daughters were bringing
her. “Oh, Gahd,” she cried, “Oh, Gahd, dem ah send me to
de dawgs . . . dem ah send me to de dawgs!” Clerk in the
cold storage j sixty dollars a month . . . wages of an accursed
“Silver” employee. Silver is nigger ; nigger is silver. Nigger-
silver . . . blah! Why, debated Miss Buckner, stockings
couldn’t be bought with that, much more take care of a woman
accustomed to “foxy clothes an’ such” and a dazzling baby
boy. Silver employee! Why couldn’t he be a “Gold” em¬
ployee . . . and get $125 a month, like “de fella nex’ tarrim,
he?” He did not get coal and fuel free, besides. He had to
dig down and pay extra for them. He was not, alas! white.
And that hurt, worried Miss Buckner. Caused her nights of
anxious sleeplessness. Wretch! “To tink dat a handsome gal
like dat would-ah tek up with a dam’ black neygah man like
him, he? Now, wa’ you tink o’ dat? H’ answer me, no!”
Oh, how her poor little ones were going to the dogs!

And so, to dam the flow of tears, Miss Buckner and the re¬
maining ones of her flamingo-like brood, drew up at The
Palm Porch. Sense-picture. All day Miss Buckner’s brunettes
would be there on the veranda posturing nude, half-nude.
Exposed to the subdued warmth, sublimated by the courting
of fans and shadow-implements, they’d be there, galore. Gor¬
geous slippers, wrought by some color-drunk Latin, rested
on the tips of toes — toes blushing, hungering to be loved and
kissed. Brown and silver ones. Purple and orange-colored
kimonos fell away from excitably harmless anatomies. Inex¬
haustible tresses of night-gloss hair, hair — echoes of Miss
Buckner’s views on the subject — hair the color of a golden

121

y(EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

moon, gave shade and sun glows to rose-red arms and bosoms.
Vases of roses, flowers . . . scented black and green leaves
. . . crowned the night. Earth-sod fragrances ; old, prema¬
turely old, and crushed, withered flowers. Stale French per¬
fumes. . . . Gems. Gems on the tips and hilts of mediaeval
daggers. Priceless stones strewn on boudoirs. Hair pins of
gold; diamond headed hat pins. Shoe heels ablaze with
white, frosty diamonds. . . .

Upon the porch sat the cream of Miss Buckner’s cultivation.
Sprawling, legs . . . soft, round, dimpled ... on the arms
of bamboo chairs . . . smoking . . . drinking . . . expostu¬
lating.

On the bare floor, dismal gore-spots on various parts of their
crash and crocus bag — eyes watering at them — were men, white
men. In the dead of night, chased by the crimson glow of
dawn, intense white faces, steaming red in the burning tropics,
flew madly, fiercely across the icy-flows of the Zone to the
luxurious solitude of The Palm Porch.

To-night, the girls, immune to the vultures of despair, lie,
sprawled on bamboo lounges, sat at three-legged tables, eyes
sparkling, twittering. . . .

O ! cornin’ down with a bunch o’ roses

Cornin’ down

Come down when Ah call ya’ . . .

Rustle of silks. European taffeta silk. Wrestling-tight.
On an open, buxom body, cherished under the breezes of a
virgin civilization, it was a trifle unadoring. It pressed and
irked one.

“There now, boys, please be quiet . . . the captain is com¬
ing. . . .”

Anywhere else she’d have slipt up, but here it rippled like
an ocean breeze free of timidity or restraint. In the presence
of Islanders it might have resulted otherwise, but to strangers
— and it was so easy to fool the whites — the color of one’s
voice went unobserved.

“Skipper, eh? Who is he? Wha’ ta hell tub is ’e on?”
Expectorations. Noisy-tongued lime juicers. . . .

122

THE J(EW JiEGRO

“Let the bleddy bastard go to ”

“Now, Tommy, that isn’t nice. . . .”

“Hell it ain’t! Blarst ’im! Gawd blimmah, I’ll blow ta
holy car load o’ yo\ . . .”

Again the swift, swift rustle of silks. Olive one of silk 5
sweating, arranging, eliminating. . . .

“Anesta, dear, take Baldy inside. . . .”

“But, mother!”

“Do, darling. . . !”

“No, Gawd blarst yo’ . . . lemme go! Lemme go, I say!”

“Be a gentleman, Baldy, and behave!”

“What a hell of a ruction it are, eh?”

“Help me wit’ ’im, daughter. . . .”

“Do, Anesta, dear. . . .”

Yielding ungently, he staggered along on the girl’s arm. He
stept in the crown of Mr. Thingamerry’s hat. A day before
he had put on a spotless white suit. Laundered by the Occupa¬
tion, the starch on the edges of it made it dagger-sharp. Now,
it was a sight. Ugly wine stains darkened it. Drink, perspira¬
tion, tobacco weed moistened his sprigless shirt front. Awry —
his tie, collar, trousers. His reddish brown hair was wet,
bushy, ruffled. Grimy curses fell from his red, grime-bound
lips. Six months on the Isthmus, its nights and the lure of
The Palm Porch had caught him in its enervating grip. It
held him tight. Sent from Liverpool to the British Postal
Agency at Colon, he had fallen for the languor of the sea
coast . . . had been seized by the magic glow of The Palm
Porch.

He came down from Heaven to earth
Day by day like us He grew. ...”

La la la, la la la la-ah ah

La la la, la la la la-ah ah ah. . . ...

“John three, sixteen, and the Lord said there was light.
‘And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness compre-
hendeth it not.’ . . .”

ViEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

Upon a palpitating bosom, Miss Buckner put a young, eager
hand. It was wildly in quest of something . . . anchorage,
perhaps.

Viewing it — queer, the disorderly temperature of women —
Captain Tintero, a local vigilante , shot a red, staring eye at her.
. . . “Well, my good lady, I see you are nervous as usual. . . .
Is not that so?”

Flattered by the captain’s graciousness, Miss Buckner curt¬
sied. Her eyelids giggled coquettishly. “Oh, my dear cap¬
tain,” she said, “it is so splendid of you to come. Pve been
thinking of you all day — really. Wasn’t I, Anesta, dear? Of
course! Anesta, dear? Anesta, where are you, my dear?
Where oh where are you?”

“It’s good to be this way. God blarst mah, it is. ‘And the
Lord said unto him, this is my beloved Son in whom I’m well
pleased.’ . . .”

“ . . . now laddie boys, don’t be naughty ... be quiet,
children. Captain, as I was saying . . . naughty . . .
naughty boys. . . . Harmless, captain. Harmless, playful
things. Anesta, Anestita? Is that the way you . . . per¬
suasive captain!”

Cackling like a hen, pitching men to one side, she swept
along. One or two British youths, palsied with liquor, desire,
glared at her . . . then, at the olive figure, gold and crimson
epaulets, high, regal prancing, at the uncovered, wolf-like
fangs of the Captain. . . .

“Christ, He was your color. Christ was olive. Jesus Christ
was a man of olive . . .”

Grimy Britishers. Loquacious lime-juicers. Wine-crazed,
women-crazed. . . .

Bringing up the rear, Captain Tintero, at best a dandy of the
more democratic salons, grew warm at the grandeur of ennui,
the beauty of excess. He, too, alas!* was not to be outdone
when he had set his heart upon a thing. Beau Brummel of the
dusky policiay he was vain, handsome, sun-colored. He
gloried in a razor slash on his right cheek which he had ob¬
tained at a brawl over a German maiden in a District cantine.
Livid, the claret about to spring out of it, it did not disfigure

124

THE CNiEW J^EGRO

him. It lit up the glow women fancied in him. When he
laughed it would turn pale, starkly pale; when he was angry
it oozed red, blood-red. . . .

For a vigilante the road to gallantry was clear. Heart of
iron, nerves of steel — to be able to club a soused Marine to
smithereens . . . possessing these, it was logic to exact tribute
from the sulky vermin of the salons. . . .

Inflated by such authority, the Captain swore, spat, dug his
heels in the faces of the English. . . .

Applying a Javanese fan to her furious bosom, Miss Buck¬
ner, her taffeta silk kicking up an immense racket, returned to
the Captain. A bolden smile covered her frank, open face.

“Now, you impetuous Panamanian!” she warmed, the
pearls on the top row of her teeth a-glitter, “you must never
be too impatient. The Bible says, ‘Him that is exalted. . . ?
The gods will never be kind to you if you keep on that
way. ... No use . . . you won’t understand the Bible!
Come! . . .”

Gathering up the ruffles of her skirt, she sped along. Into
a realm of shadowy mists. Darkness. “Too much liquor,”
she turned, by way of apology, tapping her black bandeau and
indicating the tossing figure of the British Postal Agent . . .
“too much liquor . . . don’t mind . . . el es Ingles . . .
postal agental . . . Ingles. . . .”

“ Necios ! B arbaridades ! ”

“ ... no matter what he says. . .

“Nigger bastard!”

“Baldy! Why, the very itheah! . . . Go quietly, dear. . . .”

“Really, Captain,” Miss Buckner waved a jewel-flaming
wrist, “it is quite comic. Why, the fellow’s actually offensive!
And all I can do is keep the dear child out of the wretch’s
filthy embrace . . . advances!”

It didn’t matter very much, after all. And brushing the
slip aside, Miss Buckner went on, “But of course,” she con¬
ceded, “one has to be pleasant to one’s guests. O! Captain,
in dear old Kingston, none of this sort of thing ever occurred.
. . . None! — And of course it constrains me profusely /—

“Anesta, where are you, my dear?”

S\ CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 125

Out of the dusk the girl came. Her grace, her beauty, the
endless dam of color, of emotion that flooded her face be¬
witched, unnerved the captain. In an attitude of respectful
indecision she paused at the door, one hand at her throat, the
other held out to the captain. . . .

In one’s mouth it savored of butter. Miss Buckner, there
at the door, viewing the end of an embarrassing quest, felt
happy. The captain, after all, was such a naughty boy!

Down on the carpetless porch, dipt in the brine of shadows,
the hoarse, catching voice of an Englishman called. “Anesta,
Anesta . . . mulatto girl . . . Gawd blarst the bleddy spig-
goty to ’ell! Come to me, Anesta! So ’elp me Gawd if ’e
goes artah ’er I’ll cut the gizzard out . . . hey . . . where’s
that bleddy Miss Buckner. . . ?”

Sore, briny silence. “And His word is mine. And the word
was God, and all things made by Him, and God. . . . No.
Gawd damn it, that isn’t right. Jesus! . . .”

“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness com-
prehendeth it not. . . .” Endless emotion. Swung up upon
the shores of a spirit-sea, where the owls and saints and the
shiny demons of the hideous morass emerged at the low tide
to mate and war and converse on the imperishable odes of
time . . . ghastly reality!

Scream ... it touched no one. Doing its work at a swift,
unerring pace. ... A death-rattle, and the descent of shadows
and solitude.

At noon the day after the cops came and got the body. Over
the blood-black hump a sheet was flung. It ate up the scarlet.
Native crowds stuck up their chins at it . . . even the tiny
drip-drip on the piazza. From the dark roof hanging over
the pavement it came. . . .

Way back — to be exact, a week after life moved on The
Porch — a new white screen-cloth had been put together and
pelted out that way. A slow, rigid procession of them. Now,
its edge — that is the novelty of it — taken off, Miss Buckner,

126

THE CNiEW O^EGRO

firm in the graces of the Captain drunk in Anesta’s boudoir, was
so busy with sundry affairs she did not have space to devote to
the commotion the spectacle had undoubtedly created. To put
it briefly, Miss Buckner, while Zuline sewed a button on her
suede shoes, was absorbed in the task of deciding whether to
have chocolate souffle or maiden hair custard at lunch that
afternoon. . . .

POETRY

TO A BROWN GIRL

What if his glance is bold and free,

His mouth the lash of whips?

So should the eyes of lovers be,

And so a lover’s lips.

What if no puritanic strain
Confines him to the nice?

He will not pass this way again
Nor hunger for you twice.

Since in the end consort together
Magdalen and Mary,

Youth is the time for careless weather $

Later, lass, be wary.

— Countee Cullen .

TO A BROWN BOY

That brown girl’s swagger gives a twitch
To beauty like a queen ;

Lad, never dam your body’s itch
When loveliness is seen.

For there is ample room for bliss
In pride in clean, brown limbs,

And lips know better how to kiss
Than how to raise white hymns.

And when your body’s death gives birth
To soil for spring to crown,

Men will not ask if that rare earth
Was white flesh once, or brown.

— Countee Cullen.

129

130

THE J^EW D^EGRO

TABLEAU

Locked arm in arm they cross the way.

The black boy and the white.

The golden splendor of the day
The sable pride of night.

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare
And here the fair folk talk,

Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.

Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.

— Countee Cullen .

HARLEM WINE

This is not water running here,
These thick rebellious streams
That hurtle flesh and bone past fear
Down alleyways of dreams.

This is a wine that must flow on
Not caring how or where,

So it has ways to flow upon
Where song is in the air.

So it can woo an artful flute
With loose, elastic lips,

Its measurement of joy compute
With blithe, ecstatic hips.

— Countee Cullen.

V(EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

131

SHE OF THE DANCING FEET SINGS

And what would I do in heaven, pray,

Me with my dancing feet,

And limbs like apple boughs that sway
When the gusty rain winds beat?

And how would I thrive in a perfect place
Where dancing would be sin,

With not a man to love my face,

Nor an arm to hold me in?

The seraphs and the cherubim
Would be too proud to bend
To sing the faery tunes that brim
My heart from end to end.

The wistful angels down in hell
Will smile to see my face,

And understand, because they fell
From that all-perfect place.

— Countee Cullen .

'A BROWN GIRL DEAD

With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,

Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.

Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;

She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing
To see herself to-night.

— Countee Cullen .

132

THE 2(EW A(EGRO

FRUIT OF THE FLOWER

My father is a quiet man
With sober, steady ways;

For simile, a folded fan;

His nights are like his days.

My mother’s life is puritan,

No hint of cavalier,

A pool so calm you’re sure it can
Have little depth to fear.

And yet my father’s eyes can boast
How full his life has been;

There haunts them yet the languid ghost
Of some still sacred sin.

And though my mother chants of God,
And of the mystic river,

I’ve seen a bit of checkered sod
Set all her flesh aquiver.

Why should he deem it pure mischance
A son of his is fain
To do a naked tribal dance
Each time he hears the rain?

Why should she think it devil’s art
That all my songs should be
Of love and lovers, broken heart,

And wild sweet agony?

Who plants a seed begets a bud,

Extract of that same root;

Why marvel at the hectic blood
That flushes this wild fruit?

Countee Cullen.

VVfMaLD

Countee Cullen

C^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

133

IN MEMORY OF COLONEL CHARLES YOUNG

Along the shore the tall, thin grass
That fringes that dark river,

While sinuously soft feet pass,

Begins to bleed and quiver.

The great dark voice breaks with a sob
Across the womb of night ;

Above your grave the tom-toms throb,

And the hills are weird with light.

The great dark heart is like a well
Drained bitter by the sky,

And all the honeyed lies they tell
Come there to thirst and die.

No lie is strong enough to kill
The roots that work below;

From your rich dust and slaughtered will
A tree with tongues will grow.

— Countee Cullen .

BAPTISM

Into the furnace let me go alone ;

Stay you without in terror of the heat.

I will go naked in — for thus ’tis sweet —

Into the weird depths of the hottest zone.

I will not quiver in the frailest bone,

You will not note a flicker of defeat;

My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet,

Nor mouth give utterance to any moan.

The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears;

Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name.

Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears,
Transforming me into a shape of flame.

I will come out, back to your world of tears,

A stronger soul within a finer frame.

— Claude McKay.

134

THE S^EW O^EGRO

WHITE HOUSES

Your door is shut against my tightened face,

And I am sharp as steel with discontent;

But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.

The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street,

And passion rends my vitals as I pass,

Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh I must search for wisdom every hour,

Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,

And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!

Oh I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.

— Claude McKay .

LIKE A STRONG TREE

Like a strong tree that in the virgin earth
Sends far its roots through rock and loam and clay,
And proudly thrives in rain or time of dearth,

When the dry waves scare rainy sprites away;

Like a strong tree that reaches down, deep, deep,

For sunken water, fluid underground,

Where the great-ringed unsightly blind worms creep,
And queer things of the nether world abound:

So would I live in rich imperial growth,

Touching the surface and the depth of things,
Instinctively responsive unto both,

Tasting the sweets of being and the stings,

Sensing the subtle spell of changing forms,

Like a strong tree against a thousand storms.

— Claude McKay .

ViEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

135

RUSSIAN CATHEDRAL

Bow down my soul in worship very low
And in the holy silences be lost.

Bow down before the marble man of woe,

Bow down before the singing angel host.

What jewelled glory fills my spirit’s eye!

What golden grandeur moves the depths of me!
The soaring arches lift me up on high
Taking my breath with their rare symmetry.

Bow down my soul and let the wondrous light
Of Beauty bathe thee from her lofty throne
Bow down before the wonder of man’s might.
Bow down in worship, humble and alone 5
Bow lowly down before the sacred sight
Of man’s divinity alive in stone.

— Claude McKay.

THE TROPICS IN NEW YORK

Bananas ripe and green, and ginger root,

Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,

And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,

Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs.

Set in the window, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,

And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.

My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;

A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old familiar ways,

I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

— Claude McKay .

THE U^EW ^EGRO

GEORGIA DUSK

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,

Passively darkens for night’s barbecue,

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,

An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,

And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,

Soft settling pollen where ploughed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.

Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile

Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.

Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,

Race memories of king and caravan,

High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,

Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.

Their voices rise . . . the pine trees are guitars,

Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . . .
Their voices rise . . . the chorus of the cane
Is carolling a vesper to the stars.

O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,

Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,

Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

— Jean Toomer .

137

A CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

■-

l,;

SONG OF THE SON

Pour, O pour that parting soul in song,

O pour it in the saw-dust glow of night,

Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night,

And let the valley carry it along,

And let the valley carry it along.

O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so profligate of pines,

Now just before an epoch’s sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee,
Thy son, I have in time returned to thee.

In time, although the sun is setting on
A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;
Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet
To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,
Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.

O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums,
Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air,
Passing, before they strip the old tree bare
One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes

An everlasting song, a singing tree,

Caroling softly souls of slavery,

What they were, and what they are to me,
Carolling softly souls of slavery.

— Jean Toomer.

THE C^EW JiEGRO

THE CREATION

A Negro Sermon

And God stepped out on space,

And He looked around and said,

(<Pm lonely

Pll make me a world.”

And as far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,

Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,

And the light broke,

139

A CEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

And the darkness rolled up on one side,

And the light stood shining on the other,

And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God reached out and took the light in His hands,
And God rolled the light around in His hands
Until He made the sun;

And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.

And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,

Spangling the night with the moon and stars.

Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world ;

And God said, “ That’s good.”

Then God Himself stepped down —

And the sun was on His right hand
And the moon was on His left;

The stars were clustered about His head,

And the earth was under His feet.

And God walked, and where He trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then He stopped and looked, and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.

So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas ;

He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;

He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;

And the waters above the earth came down,

The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,

And the little red flowers blossomed,

The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,

And the oak spread out his arms,

140

THE O^EW C^EGRO

And the lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran to the sea;

And God smiled again,

And the rainbow appeared,

And curled itself around His shoulder.

Then God raised His arm and He waved His hand,

Over the sea and over the land,

And He said, “ Bring forth . Bring forth”

And quicker than God could drop His hand

Fishes and fowls

And beasts and birds

Swam the rivers and the seas,

Roamed the forests and the woods,

And split the air with their wings.

And God said, “That’s good.”

Then God walked around,

And God looked around
On all that He had made.

He looked at His sun,

And He looked at His moon,

And He looked at His little stars ;

He looked on His world,

With all its living things,

And God said, “I’m lonely still”

Then God sat down

On the side of a hill where He could think;

By a deep, wide river He sat down;

With His head in His hands,

God thought and thought,

Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man”

Up from the bed of a river
God scooped the clay;

And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;

^CEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,

Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand :

This Great God,

Like a mammy bending over her baby,

Kneeled down in the dust

Toiling over a lump of clay

Till He shaped it in His own image;

Then into it He blew the breath of life,

And man became a living soul.

Amen. Amen.

* — James Weldon Johnson.

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

IVe known rivers . . .

Pve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young,

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep,

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when
Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,

And I ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

IVe known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers,

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

— Langston Hughes .

142

THE U^EW P^EGRO

AN EARTH SONG

It’s an earth song, —

And I’ve been waiting long for an earth song.

It’s a spring song, —

And I’ve been waiting long for a spring song.

Strong as the shoots of a new plant
Strong as the bursting of new buds

Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother’s
womb.

It’s an earth song,

A body-song,

A spring song, —

I have been waiting long for this spring song.

— Langston Hughes .

POEM

Being walkers with the dawn and morning
Walkers with the sun and morning,

We are not afraid of night,

Nor days of gloom,

Nor darkness,

Being walkers with the sun and morning.

— Langston Hughes .

YOUTH

We have to-morrow
Bright before us
Like a flame

Yesterday, a night-gone thing
A sun-down name

And dawn to-day

Broad arch above the road we came,

We march!

— Langston Hughes .

WEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

143

SONG

Lovely, dark, and lonely one,

Bare your bosom to the sun,

Do not be afraid of light
You who are a child of night.

Open wide your arms to life,

Whirl in the wind of pain and strife,

Face the wall with the dark closed gate,

Beat with bare, brown fists
And wait.

— Langston Hughes .

DREAM VARIATION

To fling my arms wide 7

In some place of the sun,

To whirl and to dance
Till the bright day is done.

Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes gently
Dark like me.

That is my dream.

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun.

Dance! Whirl! Whirl!

Till the quick day is done.

Rest at pale evening,

A tall, slim tree,

Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

— Langston Hughes .

144

THE CEW V(EGRO

MINSTREL MAN

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,

You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long.

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,

You do not hear
My inner cry,

Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,

You do not know
I die.

— Langston Hughes .

OUR LAND

We should have a land of sun,

Of gorgeous sun,

And a land of fragrant water

Where the twilight is a soft bandanna handkerchief

Of rose and gold,

And not this land
Where life is cold.

We should have a land of trees,

Of tall thick trees,

Bowed down with chattering parrots
Brilliant as the day,

And not this land where birds are gray.

Ah, we should have a land of joy,

Of love and joy and wine and song,

And not this land where joy is wrong.

— Langston Hughes .

A CEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

/ TOO

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes.

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

To-morrow
I’ll sit at the table
When company comes
Nobody ’ll dare
Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen”

Then.

Besides, they’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed, —

I, too, am America.

— . Langston Hughes .

THE DAY -BREAKERS

We are not come to wage a strife
With swords upon this hill,

It is not wise to waste the life
Against a stubborn will.

Yet would we die as some have done.

Beating a way for the rising sun.

— Arna Bontemps.

146

THE D(EW A CEGRO

TO SAMUEL COLERIDGE TAYLOR , UPON

HEARING HIS

E31 m W ij ri^

J&Aa'CU ftJ&L. /a+of

Strange to a sensing motherhood,

Loved as a toy — not understood,

Child of a dusky father, bold;

Frail little captive, exiled, cold.

Oft when the brooding planets sleep,

You through their drowsy empires creep,
Flinging your arms through their empty space,
Seeking the breast of an unknown face.

— Georgia Douglas Johnson.

THE ORDEAL

Ho! my brother,

Pass me not by so scornfully
Pm doing this living of being black,
Perhaps I bear your own life-pack,

And heavy, heavy is the load
That bends my body to the road.

But I have kept a smile for fate,

I neither cry, nor cringe, nor hate,
Intrepidly, I strive to bear
This handicap. The planets wear
The Maker’s imprint, and with mine
I swing into their rhythmic line;

I ask — only for destiny,

Mine, not thine.

— Georgia Douglas Johnson.

V(EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

147

ESCAPE

Shadows, shadows,

Hug me round

So that I shall not be found

By sorrow:

She pursues me
Everywhere,

I can’t lose her
Anywhere.

Fold me in your black
Abyss,

She will never look
In this,—

Shadows, shadows,

Hug me round
In your solitude
Profound.

— Georgia Douglas Johnson .

THE RIDDLE

White men’s children spread over the earth —

A rainbow suspending the drawn swords of birth,

Uniting and blending the races in one

The world man — cosmopolite — everyman’s son!

He channels the stream of the red blood and blue,
Behold him! A Triton — the peer of the two;
Unriddle this riddle of “outside in”

White men’s children in black men’s skin.

— Georgia Douglas Johnson .

148

THE NIEW 5\ CEGRO

LADY , LADY

Lady, Lady, I saw your face,

Dark as night withholding a star . . .

The chisel fell, or it might have been
You had borne so long the yoke of men.

Lady, Lady, I saw your hands,

Twisted, awry, like crumpled roots,

Bleached poor white in a sudsy tub,

Wrinkled and drawn from your rub-a-dub.

Lady, Lady, I saw your heart,

And altared there in its darksome place
Were the tongues of flame the ancients knew,
Where the good God sits to spangle through.

— Anne Spencer.

THE BLACK FINGER

I have just seen a most beautiful thing
Slim and still,

Against a gold, gold sky,

A straight black cypress,

Sensitive,

Exquisite,

A black finger
Pointing upwards.

Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?

And why are you pointing upwards?

— Angelina Grimke.

jy [EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

149

ENCHANTMENT
Part I

Night

The moonlight:

Juice flowing from an over-ripe pomegranate
bursting

The cossack-crested palm trees:
motionless

The leopard spotted shade:
inciting fear

silence seeds sown . . .

Part II

Medicine Dance

A body smiling with black beauty
Leaping into the air

Around a grotesque hyena-faced monster;
The Sorcerer —

A black body — dancing with beauty
Clothed in African moonlight,

Smiling more beauty into its body.

The hyena-faced monster yelps!

Echo!

Silence —

The dance
Leaps —

Twirls —

The twirling body comes to a fall
At the feet of the monster.

Yelps—

Wild—

Terror-filled —

Echo —

150

‘THE ViEW U^EGRO

The hyena-faced monster jumps

starts,

runs,

chases his own yelps back to the wilderness.
The black body clothed in moonlight
Raises up its head,

Holding a face dancing with delight.

Terror reigns like a new crowned king.

— Lewis Alexander.

DRAMA

“The Emperor Jones”

THE DRAMA OF NEGRO LIFE

Montgomery Gregory

President-Emeritus Charles William Eliot of Harvard
University recently expressed the inspiring thought that
America should not be a “melting-pot” for the diverse races
gathered on her soil but that each race should maintain its
essential integrity and contribute its own special and peculiar
gift to our composite civilization: not a “melting-pot” but a
symphony where each instrument contributes its particular
quality of music to an ensemble of harmonious sounds. What¬
ever else the Negro may offer as his part there is already the
general recognition that his folk-music, born of the pangs and
sorrows of slavery, has made America and the world his eternal
debtor. The same racial characteristics that are responsible for
this music are destined to express themselves with similar
excellence in the kindred art of drama. The recent notable
successes of Negro actors and of plays of Negro life on Broad¬
way point to vast potentialities in this field. Eugene O’Neill,
who more than any other person has dignified and popularized
Negro drama, gives testimony to the possibilities of the future
development of Negro drama as follows: “I believe as strongly
as you do that the gifts the Negro can — and will — bring to
our native drama are invaluable ones. The possibilities are
limitless and to a dramatist open up new and intriguing oppor¬
tunities.” Max Reinhardt, the leading continental producer,
while on his recent visit to New York commented enthusias¬
tically upon the virgin riches of Negro drama and expressed a
wish to utilize elements of it in one of his projected dramas.

154

THE J(EW T\ CEGRO

Before considering contemporary interest in Negro drama it
will be well to discover its historical background. William
Shakespeare was the first dramatist to appreciate the “intriguing
opportunities” in the life of the darker races and in his master-
tragedy Othello , he has given us the stellar role of the Moor
in a study of the effect of jealousy upon a nature of simple
and overpowering emotion. So great an embarrassment has
this “Black-a-moor” been to the Anglo-Saxon stage that the
“supreme tragedy of English drama” has suffered a distinct
unpopularity, and its chief interpreters have been compelled to
give a bleached and an adulterated presentation of the black
commander of the Venetian army. Thus O’Neill had an ex¬
cellent precedent for his Emperor Jones .

The example of Shakespeare was not followed by his
immediate successors. In fact, a character of sable hue does
not appear in the pages of English literature until a century
later when Aphra Behn wrote that sentimental romance,
Oronooko , portraying the unhappy lot of a noble Negro
prince in captivity. This tearful tragedy had numerous imi¬
tators in both fiction and drama, an example of the latter being
the Black Doctor , written by Thomas Archer and published
in London in 1 847. It was not long after this publication that
London and the continent were treated to an extraordinary
phenomenon, — the appearance of a Maryland Negro in
Othello and other Shakespearean roles in the royal theaters.
Ira Aldridge is thus the first Negro to surmount the bars of
race prejudice and to receive recognition on the legitimate
English-speaking stage.

Up until the Civil War, then, there \yas but meager interest
in the drama of the African or Negro in England, and prac¬
tically none in the United States. That great sectional con¬
flict aroused a tremendous sentimental interest in the black
population of the South and gave us Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin , which also enjoyed a wide popularity
as a drama. The Octoroon , written on the same pattern,
soon followed on the American stage. These works mark the
first instance where an attempt is made to present to the Amer¬
ican public in a realistic manner the authentic life of the Negro.

155

^ CEGRO youth speaks

They accustomed the theater-goer to the appearance of a num¬
ber of Negro characters (played by blacked-face white actors)
on the stage, and this fact was in itself a distinct gain for
Negro drama.

Although Uncle T om’s Cabin passed into obscurity,
Topsy survived. She was blissfully ignorant of any an¬
cestors, but she has given us a fearful progeny. With her,
popular dramatic interest in the Negro changed from serious
moralistic drama to the comic phase. We cannot say that as yet
the public taste has generally recovered from this descent from
sentimentalism to grotesque comedy, and from that in turn to
farce, mimicry and sheer burlesque. The earliest expression
of Topsy’s baneful influence is to be found in the minstrels
made famous by the Callenders, Lew Dockstader, and Prim¬
rose and West. These comedians, made up into grotesque
caricatures of the Negro race, fixed in the public taste a dra¬
matic stereotype of the race that has been almost fatal to a
sincere and authentic Negro drama. The earliest Negro shows
were either imitations of these minstrels or slight variations
from them. In fact, the average play of Negro life to-day,

whether employing white or black actors, reeks with this per-
nicious influence.

It was not until 1895 that the Negro attempted to break
with the minstrel tradition, when John W. Isham formed
The Octoroons, a musical show. Minor variety and vaude¬
ville efforts followed, but the first all-Negro comedy to receive
Broadway notice was Williams and Walker’s In Dahomey
which played at the Forty-sixth Street Theatre for several
weeks. Williams and Walker, Cole and Johnson, S. H.
Ludley, and Ernest Hogan now presented a succession of shows
m which the Negro still appeared in caricature but which
offered some compensation by the introduction of a slight plot
and much excellent music and dancing. Such shows as Abys¬
sinia, Rufus Rastus, Bandana Land, and Mr. Lode of Coal,
are still familiar names to the theater-goers between
J900 and 1910. During the latter year “Bert” Williams’
inimitable genius was fully recognized, and from then until
his death he was an idol of the American public. It may not

1 56 THE Di \EW ^ EGRO

be amiss to state that it was Williams’ ambition to appear in a
higher type of drama, and David Belasco states in the intro¬
duction to The Son of Laughter , a biography of “Bert” Wil¬
liams by Margaret Rowland, that his death probably pre¬
vented him from appearing under his direction as a star.
Negro drama will always be indebted to the genius of this great
comedian and appreciative of the fact that by breaking into
The Follies “Bert” Williams unlocked the doors of the Ameri¬
can theater to later Negro artists.

The reader will probably be familiar with the extraordinary
successes of the latest Negro musical comedies, Shuffle Along ,
Runniny Wild , and From Dixie to Broadway , and with the
names of their stars — Sissle and Blake, Miller and Lyles,
and Florence Mills. In many respects these shows represent
notable advances over the musical shows that preceded them,
yet fundamentally they carry-on the old minstrel tradition.
Ludwig Lewisohn, the eminent New York critic, thus evaluates
their work: “Much of this activity, granting talent and energy,
is of slight interest j much of it always strikes me as an actual
imitation of the white ‘blacked-face’ comedian — an imitation
from the Negro’s point of view of a caricature of himself.
All of these things have little or no value as art, as an expres¬
sion of either the Negro individual or the Negro race.” Yet
in all justice it should be said that these shows have given a
large number of talented Negroes their only opportunity for
dramatic expression and have resulted in the development of
much stage ability. “Bert” Williams and Florence Mills are
examples of dramatic geniuses who have elevated their work
in these productions to the highest art. Certainly historically
these musical shows are a significant element in the groping
of the Negro for dramatic expression, and who knows but that
they may be the genesis for an important development of our
drama in the future?

Serious Negro drama is a matter of recent growth and still
is in its infancy. It is in this field of legitimate drama that the
Negro must achieve success if he is to win real recognition in
the onward sweep of American drama. The year 1910 may
be said to mark the first significant step in this direction, for

WEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS i57

it witnessed the production with a distinguished cast, including
Guy Bates Post and Annie Russell, at the New Theatre in New
York City, of Edward Sheldon’s The Nigger (later called
The Governor ), a somewhat melodramatic treatment of the
tragedy of racial admixture in the South. It marks the first
sincere attempt to sound the depths of our racial experience for
modern drama. A more sympathetic and poetic utilization of
this dramatic material appears a few years later in the com¬
position of three one-act plays ( Granny Maumee , The
Rider of Dreams , and Simon the Cyrenian ), by Ridgely
Torrence. Of equal importance was the artistic staging of
these plays with a cast of talented Negro actors by Sheldon,
Mrs. Norman Hapgood, and others. The venture was a
pleasing artistic success, and but for the intervention of the
World War might have resulted in the establishment of a
permanent Negro Little Theatre in New York City. Not only
had the public been impressed with the artistic value of such
plays, but it also had been given its first demonstration of the
ability of the Negro actor in other than burlesque parts. Opal
Cooper especially won the plaudits of the critics, and, like John
the Baptist, he proved to be only the forerunner of one who
was to touch the peaks of histrionic accomplishment.

Then by a tour-de-force of genius — for the histrionic ability

of Charles Gilpin has been as effective as the dramatic genius

Eugene O Neill the serious play of Negro life broke

through to public favor and critical recognition. Overnight

this weird psychological study of race experience was hailed as

a dramatic masterpiece and an unknown Negro was selected by

the Drama League as one of the ten foremost actors on the

American stage. In any further development of Negro drama,

The Emperor Jones , written by O’Neill, interpreted by Gilpin’

and produced by the Provincetown Players, will tower as

a beacon-light of inspiration. It marks the breakwater

plunge of Negro drama into the main stream of American
drama.

In 1923 Raymond O’Neill assembled a noteworthy group
of Negro actors in Chicago and formed the “Ethiopian Art
Theatre.” Following successful presentation there he launched

158 THE C^EW T^EGRO

his interesting theater on Broadway. Whereas Torrence started
out with several original race plays, O’Neill attempted the
adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome and Shakespeare’s
Comedy of Errors. His chief success was the production of
The Chip Woman's Fortune , a one-act race play by the
young Negro dramatist, Willis Richardson. The acting of
Evelyn Preer, the Kirkpatricks, Olden and Solomon Bruce was
equal to the best traditions of the American theater — but even
great acting could not atone for an unwise selection of plays.
This untimely collapse of a most promising enterprise should
hold a valuable lesson for other promoters of Negro drama.

Since these passing successes of the Negro on the regular
stage, there have been several hopeful experiments in the Little
Theatre and educational fields, with larger likelihood of per¬
manent results. At Howard University, in Washington, D. C.,
the writer, with the enthusiastic co-operation of Marie-Moore-
Forrest, Cleon Throckmorton, Alain Leroy Locke and the
University officials, undertook to establish on an enduring
basis the foundations of Negro drama through the institution
of a dramatic laboratory where Negro youth might receive
sound training in the arts of the theater. The composition of
original race plays formed the pivotal element in the project.
The Howard Players have given ample evidence of having the
same significance for Negro drama that the erstwhile “47
Workshop” at Harvard University and the North Carolina
University Players have had for American drama in general.
Atlanta University, Hampton Institute, and Tuskegee Institute
have been making commendable efforts in the same direction.
In Harlem, the Negro quarter of New York City, Anne Wolter
has associated with her an excellent corps of dramatic workers
in the conduct of “The Ethiopian Art Theatre School.”

Finally, mention must be made of two young Negro actors
who have been maintaining the same high standard of artistic
performance as established by Gilpin. Paul Robeson has suc¬
ceeded to the role of The Emperor Jones , and has appeared
in the leading part in O’Neill’s latest Negro drama, All God's
Chillun Got Wings . Eugene Corbie has likewise given a
creditable performance as the “Witch Doctor” in Cape Smoke .

^CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS x59

Thus a sufficient demonstration has been made that Gilpin’s

achievement was not merely a comet-flare across the dramatic

horizon but a trustworthy sign of the histrionic gift of his
race.

The past and present of Negro drama lies revealed before

us. It is seen that the popular musical comedies with their

unfortunate minstrel inheritance have been responsible for a

fateful misrepresentation of Negro life. However, the efforts

toward the development of a sincere and artistic drama have not

been altogether in vain. O’Neill and Torrence have shown

that the ambitious dramatist has a rich and virgin El Dorado

in the_ racial experiences of black folk. As the spirituals

have risen from the folk-life of the race, so too will there

develop out of the same treasure-trove a worthy contribution

to a native American drama. The annual prizes now being

offered through the vision of Charles S. Johnson of The

Opportunity magazine and of W. E. B. DuBois and Jessie

Fauset of The Crisis magazine for original racial expression

in the various literary forms are acting as a splendid stimulus

to Negro writers to begin the adequate expression of their
race life.

Our ideal is a national Negro Theater where the Negro

^ ^ ^ ^ artist in concert shall

fashion a drama that will merit the respect and admiration of
America. Such an institution must come from the Negro him¬
self, as he alone can truly express the soul of his people. The
race must surrender that childish self-consciousness that refuses
to face the facts of its own life in the arts but prefers the
blandishments of flatterers, who render all efforts at true artistic
expression a laughing-stock by adorning their characters with
the gaudy gowns of cheap romance. However disagreeable the
fact may be in some quarters, the only avenue of genuine
achievement in American drama for the Negro lies in the
development of the rich veins of folk-tradition of the past and
m the portrayal of the authentic life of the Negro masses of
to-day. The older leadership still clings to the false gods of
servile reflection of the more or less unfamiliar life of an alien
race. The “New Negro,” still few in number, places his faith

160 THE ViEW DiEGRO

in the potentialities of his own people — he believes that the
black man has no reason to be ashamed of himself, but that in
the divine plan he too has a worthy and honorable destiny.

The hope of Negro drama is the establishment of numerous
small groups of Negro players throughout the country who
shall simply and devotedly interpret the life that is familiar
to them for the sheer joy of artistic expression.

THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER

Jessie Fauset

The black man bringing gifts, and particularly the gift of
laughter, to the American stage is easily the most anomalous,
the most inscrutable figure of the century. All about him and
within himself stalks the conviction that like the Irish, the
Russian and the Magyar he has some peculiar offering which
shall contain the very essence of the drama. Yet the medium
through which this unique and intensely dramatic gift might
be offered has been so befogged and misted by popular pre¬
conception that the great gift, though divined, is as yet not
clearly seen.

Popular preconception in this instance refers to the pres¬
sure of white opinion by which the American Negro is sur¬
rounded and by which his true character is almost submerged.
For years the Caucasian in America has persisted in dragging
to the limelight merely one aspect of Negro characteristics,
by which the whole race has been glimpsed, through which it
has been judged. The colored man who finally succeeds in
impressing any considerable number of whites with the truth
that he does not conform to these measurements is regarded as
the striking exception proving an unshakable rule. The me¬
dium then through which the black actor has been presented
to the world has been that of the “funny man” of America.
Ever since those far-off times directly after the Civil War
when white men and colored men too, blacking their faces,
presented the antics of plantation hands under the caption of
Georgia Minstrels” and the like, the edict has gone forth that
the black man on the stage must be an end-man.

In passing one pauses to wonder if this picture of the black
American as a living comic supplement has not been painted
in order to camouflage the real feeling and knowledge of his
white compatriot. Certainly the plight of the slaves under

162

THE J(EW 3\ (EGRO

even the mildest of masters could never have been one to
awaken laughter. And no genuinely thinking person, no really
astute observer, looking at the Negro in modern American life,
could find his condition even now a first aid to laughter. That
condition may be variously deemed hopeless, remarkable, ad¬
mirable, inspiring, depressing 3 it can never be dubbed merely
amusing.

• • • • •

It was the colored actor who gave the first impetus away
from this buffoonery. The task was not an easy one. For
years the Negro was no great frequenter of the theater. And
no matter how keenly he felt the insincerity in the presentation
of his kind, no matter how ridiculous and palpable a caricature
such a presentation might be, the Negro auditor with the help¬
lessness of the minority was powerless to demand something
better and truer. Artist and audience alike were in the grip
of the minstrel formula. It was at this point in the eighteen-
nineties that Ernest Hogan, pioneer comedian of the better
type, changed the tradition of the merely funny, rather silly
“end-man” into a character with a definite plot in a rather
loosely constructed but none the less well outlined story.
The method was still humorous, but less broadly, less exclu¬
sively. A little of the hard luck of the Negro began to
creep in. If he was a buffoon, -he was a buffoon wearing his
rue. A slight, very slight quality of the Harlequin began to
attach to him. He was the clown making light of his troubles
but he was a wounded, a sore-beset clown.

This figure became the prototype of the plays later pre¬
sented by those two great characters, Williams and Walker.
The ingredients of the comedies in which these two starred
usually consisted of one dishonest, overbearing, flashily dressed
character (Walker) and one kindly, rather simple, hard-luck
personage (Williams). The interest of the piece hinged on
the juxtaposition of these two men. Of course these plays, too,
were served with a sauce of humor because the public, true
to its carefully taught and rigidly held tradition, could not
dream of a situation in which colored people were anything
but merely funny. But the hardships and woes suffered by

* CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 163

Williams, ridiculous as they were, introduced with the element
of folk comedy some element of reality.

Side by side with Williams and Walker, who might be called
the apostles of the “legitimate” on the stage for Negroes, came
the merriment and laughter and high spirits of that incom¬
parable pair, Cole and Johnson. But they were essentially the
geniuses of musical comedy. At that time their singers and
dancers outsang and outdanced the neophytes of contemporary
white musical comedies even as their followers to this day out-
sing and outdance in their occasional appearances on Broadway
their modern neighbors. Just what might have been the
ultimate trend of the ambition of this partnership, the untimely
death of Mr.- Cole rendered uncertain ; but speaking offhand
I should say that the relation of their musical comedy idea to
the fixed plot and defined dramatic concept of the Williams
and Walker plays molded the form of the Negro musical
show which still persists and thrives on the contemporary stage.
It was they who capitalized the infectious charm of so much
rich dark beauty, the verve and abandon of Negro dancers, the
glorious fullness of Negro voices. And they produced those
effects in the Red Shawl in a manner still unexcelled, except
in the matter of setting, by any latter-day companies.

But Williams and Walker, no matter how dimly, were seek¬
ing a method whereby the colored man might enter the
legitimate. They were to do nothing but pave the way.
Even this task was difficult but they performed it well.

* *

Those who knew Bert W llliams say that his earliest leanings
were toward the stage ; but that he recognized at an equally
early age that his color would probably keep him from ever
making the ( legitimate.” Consequently, deliberately, as one
who desiring to become a great painter but lacking the means
for travel and study might take up commercial art, he turned
his attention to minstrelsy. Natively he possessed the art of
mimicry 5 intuitively he realized that his first path to the stage
must lie along the old recognized lines of “funny man.” He
was, as few of us recall, a Jamaican by birth ; the ways of the
American Negro were utterly alien to him and did not come

1 64 THE C^EW ^ EGRO

spontaneously 3 he set himself therefore to obtaining a knowl¬
edge of them. For choice he selected, perhaps by way of con¬
trast, the melancholy out-of-luck Negro, shiftless, doleful,
“easy”; the kind that tempts the world to lay its hand none
too lightly upon him. The pursuit took him years, but at
length he was able to portray for us not only that “typical
Negro” which the white world thinks is universal but also the
special types of given districts and localities with their own
peculiar foibles of walk and speech and jargon. He went to
London and studied under Pietro, greatest pantomimist of his
day, until finally he, too, became a recognized master in the
field of comic art.

But does anyone who realizes that the foibles of the Ameri¬
can Negro were painstakingly acquired by this artist, doubt
that Williams might just as well have portrayed the Irishman,
the Jew, the Englishman abroad, the Scotchman or any other
of the vividly etched types which for one reason or another
lend themselves so readily to caricature? Can anyone pre¬
sume to say that a man who travelled north, east , south and
west and even abroad in order to acquire accent and jargon,
aspect and characteristic of a people to which he was bound by
ties of blood but from whom he was natively separated by
training and tradition, would not have been able to portray
with equal effectiveness what, for lack of a better term, we
must call universal roles?

There is an unwritten law in America that though white may
imitate black, black, even when superlatively capable, must
never imitate white. In other words, grease-paint may be used
to darken but never to lighten.

Williams’ color imposed its limitations upon him even in his
chosen field. His expansion was always upward but never
outward. He might portray black people along the gamut
from roustabout to unctuous bishop. But he must never stray
beyond those limits. How keenly he felt this few of us knew
until after his death. But it was well known to his intimates
and professional associates. W. C. Fields, himself an expert
in the art of amusing, called him “the funniest man I ever saw
and the saddest man I ever knew.”

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 165

He was sad with the sadness of hopeless frustration. The
gift of laughter in his case had its source in a wounded heart
and in bleeding sensibilities.

• • • • •

That laughter for which we are so justly famed has had
in late years its over-tones of pain. Now for some time past
it has been used by colored men who have gained a precarious
footing on the stage to conceal the very real dolor raging in
their breasts. To be by force of circumstances the most dra¬
matic figure in a country ; to be possessed of the wells of feeling,
of the most spontaneous instinct for efFective action and to be
shunted no less always into the role of the ridiculous and
funny, — that is enough to create the quality of bitterness for
which we are ever so often rebuked. Yet that same laughter
influenced by these same untoward obstacles has within the last
four years known a deflection into another channel, still pro¬
ductive of mirth, but even more than that of a sort of cosmic
gladness, the joy which arises spontaneously in the spectator
as a result of the sight of its no less spontaneous bubbling in
others. What hurt most in the spectacle of the Bert Williams5
funny man and his forerunners was the fact that the laughter
which he created must be objective. But the new “funny man55
among black comedians is essentially funny himself. He is
joy and mischief and rich, homely native humor personified.
He radiates good feeling and happiness ; it is with him now a
state of being purely subjective. The spectator is infected
with his high spirits and his excessive good will; a stream of
well-being is projected across the footlights into the conscious¬
ness of the beholder.

This phenomenon has been especially visible in the rendi¬
tion of the colored musical “shows,55 Shuffle Along , Runnin 5
Wild , Lfca, which livened up Broadway recently for a too
brief season. Those of us who were lucky enough to com¬
pare with the usual banality of musical comedy, the verve
and pep, the liveliness and gayety of those productions will
not soon forget them. The medley of shades, the rich col¬
orings, the abundance of fun and spirits on the part of the
players all combined to produce 'an atmosphere which was

1 66

THE TiEW P^EGRO

actually palpable, so full was it of the ecstasy and joy of
living. The singing was inimitable; the work of the chorus
apparently spontaneous and unstudied. Emotionally they gar¬
nished their threadbare plots and comedy tricks with the genius
of a new comic art.

The performers in all three of these productions gave out
an impression of sheer happiness in living such as I have never
before seen on any stage except in a riotous farce which I once
saw in Vienna and where the same effect of superabundant
vitality was induced. It is this quality of vivid and untheatrical
portrayal of sheer emotion which seems likely to be the Ne¬
gro's chief contribution to the stage. A comedy made up of
such ingredients as the music of Sissle and Blake, the quaint,
irresistible humor of Miller and Lyles, the quintessence of
jazzdom in the Charleston, the superlativeness of Miss Mills'
happy abandon could know no equal. It would be the line by
which all other comedy would have to be measured. Behind
the banalities and clap-trap and crudities of these shows, this
supervitality and joyousness glow from time to time in a given
step or gesture or in the teasing assurance of such a line as:
“If you've never been vamped by a brown-skin, you've never
been vamped at all.”

And as Carl van Vechten recently in his brilliant article,
Prescription for the Negro T heater , so pointedly advises
and prophesies, once this spirit breaks through the silly “child¬
ish adjuncts of the minstrel tradition" and drops the unworthy
formula of unoriginal imitation of the stock revues, there will
be released on the American stage a spirit of comedy such as
has been rarely known.

• • • • .

The remarkable thing about this gift of ours is that it has
its rise, I am convinced, in the very woes which beset us. Just
as a person driven by great sorrow may finally go into an
orgy of laughter, just so an oppressed and too hard driven
people breaks over into compensating laughter and merriment.
It is our emotional salvation. There would be no point in
mentioning this rather obvious fact were it not that it argues
also the possession on our part of a histrionic endowment for

Paul Robeson

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 167

the portrayal of tragedy. Not without reason has tradition
made comedy and tragedy sisters and twins, the capacity for
one argues the capacity for the other. It is not surprising then
that the period that sees the Negro actor on the verge of great
comedy has seen him breaking through to the portrayal of
serious and legitimate drama. No one who has seen Gilpin
and Robeson in the portrayal of The Emperor Jones and
of All God’s Chillun can fail to realize that tragedy, too,
is a vastly fitting role for the Negro actor. And so with the
culminating of his dramatic genius, the Negro actor must come
finally through the very versatility of his art to the universal
role and the main tradition of drama, as an artist first and only
secondarily as a Negro.

• • • • •

Nor when within the next few years, this question comes up,
— as I suspect it must come up with increasing insistence, will
the more obvious barriers seem as obvious as they now appear.
For in this American group of the descendants of Mother
Africa, the question of color raises no insuperable barrier,
seeing that with chameleon adaptability we are able to offer
white colored men and women for Hamlet , The Doll’s House
and the Second Mrs. T anqueray ; brown men for Othello ;
yellow girls for Madam Butterfly; black men for The Em¬
peror Jones. And underneath and permeating all this be¬
wildering array of shades and tints is the unshakable precision
of an instinctive and spontaneous emotional art.

All this beyond any doubt will be the reward of the “gift
of laughter” which many black actors on the American stage
have proffered. Through laughter we have conquered even
the lot of the jester and the clown. The parable of the one
talent still holds good and because we have used the little
which in those early painful days was our only approach we
find ourselves slowly but surely moving toward that most glit¬
tering of all goals, the freedom of the American stage. I hope
that Hogan realizes this and Cole and Walker, too, and that
lastly Bert Williams the inimitable, will clap us on with those
tragic black-gloved hands of his now that the gift of his laugh¬
ter is no longer tainted with the salt of chagrin and tears.

COMPROMISE

A Folk Play
By Willis Richardson
Characters

Jane Lee, a widow
Alec, her son
Annie, her daughter
Ruth, her younger daughter
Ben Carter, a white neighbor

This room at the home of Jane Lee and her children in a
country district of JVLaryland has at its center a rectangular
table , at the right and left of which are chairs. Left side is an
open fireplace , above which stands a chair against the wall and
a door leading to the kitchen. At the center of the rear wall
stands a bench on which is a water bucket and dipper. At the
7 ight of the bench a door leads outside. Fight sidey a door
leads to the stairs , and below this door another chair stands
against the wall. At first the room is vacant , but presently
Jane, a woman of five-and-fortyy enters from the kitchen.
Taking the buckety she goes to the outer door and calls her sony
Alec.

JANE

[Calling.]

Alec!

ALEC

Ma’am?

168

CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

169

JANE

Come here!

[Presently Alec, a youth of twenty , appears. He is in
his shirt sleeves and is wearing a slouch hat. She hands
him the bucket .]

Get me a bucket o’ water.

[Taking the bucket , Alec goes out to the right and Jane
comes back to the table. Looking towards the kitchen.\
Come on, children, Ah ain’t got all day to wait.

[Her two daughters , Annie, eighteen , and Ruth, four¬
teen, enter from the kitchen. Both are pretty girls but
shabbily dressed. Annie is carrying a small market
basket. ]

[Taking money from her pocket and giving it to Annie.]
Be sure and don’t forget the coffee.

[Looking closely at Annie.]

What’s the matter with you, gal? You ain’t smiled in the
last two days.

ANNIE

Nothin’.

JANE

It must be somethin’. You ain’t been actin’ like that all the
time. It’s enough for me and Alec to be goin’ around with
heavy hearts. You’-all ain’t old enough to have no troubles
yet.

ANNIE

[Looking away.\

Ain’t nothin’ the matter with me.

JANE

All right, go on; and don’t forget to hurry back.

[ They go out. She stands in the doorway watching them
and shaking her head. ]

[To Alec as he returns with the bucket of water and is
on his way to the kitchen with it.\

When you get done cuttin’ the wood come in and Ah’ll have
a good cup 0’ coffee for you.

ALEC

[ Returning from the kitchen .]

Ah thought you said the coffee was out.

JANE

Ah had enough left for one pot and Annie’s gone after
more. Boy, — you notice anything strange about Annie lately?

ALEC

Ah notice she’s mighty gloomy. Ah seen huh behind the
house cryin’ yesterday.

JANE

[ Interested. ]

You didn’t say nothin’ about it.

ALEC

She said she just dropped a stick o’ wood on huh foot.

JANE

Ah was just tellin’ huh a minute ago she was too young to
be mopin’ around, that she don’t know nothin’ about trouble
yet. It’s enough for you an’ me to be worryin’.

ALEC

You’re right, Ma [going out] , I ain’t done chopping yet.

[He goes back to the yard. Jane stands watching him
for a few moments , then goes to the kitchen. The
regular fall of Alec’s ax can be heard as he cuts wood
outside. Presently Ben Carter enters from the yard.
He is a white man between forty-five and fifty , wear¬
ing a coat but no necktie in his soft collar.]

CARTER

[ Calling out as he throws his hat on the bench.]

Anybody home!

JANE

[ Appearing at the kitchen door.]

Mornin’, Ben Carter.

ViEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

171

CARTER

Morning Jane. Got any good coffee?

JANE

Ah don’t never have no other kind.

CARTER

I know you don’t. You make the best coffee in this county.
I ’clare I can’t get my wife -

JANE

Sit down and Ah ’ll get you a cup.

[He sits at the left of the table and she goes into the
kitchen . ]

CARTER

I kin smell it all the way in here, Jane.

JANE

[Appearing with a cup of coffee and placing it on the table
before him. ]

Ef there’s anything men-folks is pertic’ler about, it’s coffee.
Jim was moughty pertic’ler about his’n — if he was good for
nuthin’.

CARTER

Now, Jane — lay off Jim. Jim wasn’t the wust husban’ in
these parts.

JANE

Jim was big and strong enuf — and good natured, ’cept
drinkin’ — but Jim was nuthin’ up here [taps her forehead ].

CARTER

Oh, well, Jim’s gone now. Ferget it, Jane.

JANE

If he’d had any brains he wouldn’t a tuk that hund’ed dollars
and drunk hisself ter death, would he?

172

THE CEW JS CEGRO

CARTER

[Nervously.]

Ferget it, Jane. You’re like my wife, yer mouth spoils yer
cookin’ — ef I do say so. Now you got Alec, and he’s good
an’ strong, and soon he’ll -

JANE

[Interrupting.]

Ben Carter, you sit there an’ tell me I got Alec. [Excit¬
edly What about Jim? What about Joe?

CARTER

Now, Jane — you’re such out o’ sorts. Don’t bring up poor
Joe.

JANE

[Bitterly.]

Yer hund’ed dollars didn’t shut me up. Yer com’permised
with Jim.

CARTER

[Getting up.]

Ef you will keep throwin’ up that accident, why, I’ll gie
yer my house-room. Naggin’ won’t bring Joe back.

JANE

Ah know it — but if I ’a’ killed him, I’d be skeered to call
his name.

CARTER

[Excitedly.]

Killed him! Don’t talk like that, Jane. You talk like I
killed that boy on pu’pose [shouting], when you know I didn’t.

JANE

Maybe you didn’t kill him on purpose, but killin’ is killin’ j
an’ you got off with payin’ Jim a hund’ed dollars.

CARTER

[Brin gift g his cup down with a hang on the table.]

I done what I thought was fair. If you’ -all had ’a’ gone to
law maybe you wouldn’t ’a’ got nothin’.

2(EGR0 TOUTH SPEAKS

173

JANE

Maybe we wouldn’t— you bein’ white and we bein’ black.

CARTER

I didn t mean it like that. You know we’ve been neighbors
for years and never had no kind o’ trouble. I mean if your
boy Joe had ’a’ been white and you all had ’a’ been white -

JANE

If our boy Joe had ’a’ been white, we’d ’a’ been white any¬
how.

CARTER

I know you would, and that’s what I’m sayin’. If you’-all
had a been white, you couldn’t ’a’ got nothin’ by goin’ to law
cause it wasn’t nothin’ but a accident out and out. When I
shot up in that tree I didn’t have no idea Joe was up there.

JANE

You didn’t have to shoot.

CARTER

I told you a hundred times, Jane, I done it to scare the
boys. I told ’em to keep out o’ my orchard, and when I seen
a gang of ’em there, pickin’ up apples under that tree, I got
my gun and shot up in the tree to scare ’em. God knows I
didn’t know nobody was up there till Joe fell. I didn’t know
he was up there shakin’ apples down.

JANE

That accident killed a lot 0’ hope in me. Ma man, Jim,
took that hund’ed dollars and soon drunk hisself to death and
that’s two o’ ma men-folks gone on account o’ you.

CARTER

Nobody felt it more than I did, Jane, unless it was you. And
I hope you ain’t harborin’ no bad feelin’s.

174

THE 3\ CEW 2(EGR0

JANE

No, Ah ain’t got no bad feelin’s for you, Ben Carter. Ah
always found you a pretty good square man, good as the aver¬
age and better ’n some Ah know; but you might ’a’ done more

bv us than a hund’ed dollars. Ah know you could ’a’ spared
*

more.

CARTER

I know ’I could ’a’ spared more, but Jim agreed when I said
a hund’ed and I couldn’t ’a’ paid as much as the boy’s life was
worth nohow.

JANE

’Deed you couldn’t.

CARTER

And ain’t no man, black or white, goin’ to give up more
money than he has to.

JANE

Ah reckon you’re right there. All men is pretty near alike
when it comes to payin’ out money.

[She goes to the door and stands with her back to him

looking out.]

CARTER

I don’t see no use in you bein’ so gloomy about a thing that’s
done and been done for seven years.

JANE

[Turning to him.]

You can’t expect for me to go around smilin’ with the hopes
Ah had for that boy. If he had ’a’ lived till now he’d ’a’
been twenty-five, wouldn’t he?

CARTER

Yes.

V(EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 175

JANE

He’d ’a’ been a man now and able to work and help me
educate the younger ones, Alec and Annie and Ruth. That’s
what Ah wanted most of all — to educate ma children.

CARTER

Ain’t none of us can get everything we want.

JANE

But seems like Ah don’t get nothin’ Ah want.

CARTER

You’re just feelin’ gloomy to-day, that’s all. You won’t
be feelin like that to-morrow. [Giving her some change . ]
Get me another cup o’ coffee, won’t you?

JANE

[Taking the cup.\

You might think Ah’ll be feelin’ all right to-morrow but
Ah don’t think so. Ah been feelin’ the same way for near
seven years.

[She goes to the kitchen with the cup.\

CARTER

[Speaking to her from where he sits. ]

If there’s anything I kin do, or anything my wife kin do

anything that’s reasonable, we’ll do it.

JANE

[Returning with the coffee.\

No, there ain’t nothin’ you’-all kin do. Ah ain’t got no
claim on you now, Ben.

CARTER

I don’t want no hard feelin’s with none o’ my neighbors
white or black.

17 6

THE ^CEW ^ EGRO

JANE

Ah told you once Ah didn’t have no hard feelin’s against
you.

CARTER

Maybe you ain’t, but your boy, Alec, acts like he is. He
never speaks to me on the road, and when he looks at me
seems like he hates me.

JANE

You can’t expect Alec to go around smilin’ at you after
what’s happened.

CARTER

He might act a little more friendly.

JANE

Maybe he might and maybe he mightn’t. There’s a lots
o’ things about us you don’t know, Ben Carter, and never
dreamed of. Ah’m goin’ to tell you one of ’em now.

[She goes just outside the door which leads to the stair¬
way and brings back a gun.\

See this gun?

CARTER

Yes.

JANE

This gun’s been loaded for seven years, ever since Joe was
killed. Alec was fourteen then, and he wanted to go out and
shoot you.

CARTER

Shoot me for somethin’ I couldn’t help?

JANE

He didn’t see it the way you see it. He thought you could
’a’ helped it.

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

177

CARTER

He wasn’t a thing but a boy. Why didn’t you’-all explain
it to him?

JANE

We done the best we could. We persuaded him not to do
no shootin’ so it didn’t take long to wear off his mind, he bein’
a kid 5 but he never liked none 0’ you’-all after that.

CARTER

Kept hate in his heart for seven years?

JANE

[Putting the gun in the corner.]

Ah wouldn’t call it hate out and out, but you couldn’t expect
him to love you after you shot his big brother.

CARTER

Can’t he see yet that I didn’t mean to do it?

JANE

Seems like he can’t.

CARTER

I’m glad you kin see I didn’t mean it.

JANE

Yes, Ah kin see it, Ben. If Ah couldn’t see you didn’t mean
to do it you’d ’a’ been dead years ago.

[Starting.]

Dead!

CARTER

Yes.

JANE

CARTER

You mean you’d ’a’ killed me?

i78

THE V{_EW Ui_EGRO

JANE

That’s what Ah would. If Ah had ’a’ thought you killed
ma oldest boy on purpose do you think you could ’a5 come in
here and drunk ma coffee without me p’izonin’ you? Ah’d
’a’ put enough p’izon in you to kill ten horses, Ben. You’d
’a’ been dead so long your bones would ’a’ been dust.

CARTER

Ah never thought it of you, Jane.

JANE

Could you blame me if Ah had ’a’ thought you killed Joe
on purpose?

CARTER

I can’t say I could ’a’ blamed you if you had ’a’ thought
that.

JANE

You just go home and pray and thank your Gawd Ah didn’t
think that.

CARTER

I’ll have to talk to Alec and see if I can’t get him to see it
like you do.

JANE

Ah wish you could get him to see it that a way.

[Ruth enters with the basket on her arm.\

JANE

Where’s Annie?

RUTH

[Looking from her mother to Carter.]
She stopped to talk to Jack Carter.

WiEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

179

JANE

She ought to come on home. Take them things in the
kitchen.

[Ruth goes into the kitchen with the basket.]

JANE

Ah don t like too much friendship between Annie and your
boy Jack.

CARTER

I can t see no harm in it. They played together when they
was kids and growed up together.

JANE

Ah know that, but they ain’t kids now. It’ll have to stop.

RUTH

[Who has returned from the kitchen.]

Ma, is anything between Annie and Jack?

JANE

[ Looking at her closely.]

Anything how? Why?

RUTH

Annie was cryin’ while she was talkin’ to him.

[Carter stops the cup on the way to his lips and listens
carefully.]

JANE

Cryin’? What’s she cryin’ for?

RUTH

Ah don’t know ’m.

JANE

You go and tell huh to come right home.

[Ruth goes out.]

i8o THE C^EW ViEGRO

JANE

Ah don’t like the looks o’ things, Ben Carter ; Ah don’t like
it a bit.

CARTER

Don’t reckon it’s nothin’ but a few cross words.

JANE

She wouldn’t cry about no cross words — not Annie.

CARTER

What else could it be?

JANE

Ah don’t know. Ah hope there ain’t nothin’ wrong. Ah
hope to Gawd it ain’t.

CARTER

It can’t be nothin’ wrong. All them children but Alec’s
been playin’ together like brothers and sisters all their lives.

JANE

\Who has gone to the door.}

Here she comes now.

[Carter dunks the last of his coffee and they wait in
silence until Annie enters . Jane has come back to the
table and Annie, although it is summer , closes the door
behind her by backing against it.\

What you shuttin’ the door for an’ it roastin’ like this?
What you wipin’ yo’ eyes about? [Annie reopens the door.}
Where you been? Ah just sent Ruth after you.

ANNIE

Ah’ve been to the store.

W.EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

1 8 1

JANE

[More impatiently as the argument advances. ]
You been pass the store.

ANNIE

[Sullenly.]

You sent me to the store and that's where Ah've been.

JANE

Ah tell you, you been pass the store! What's that mud
doin' on your shoes if you ain't been pass the store? Ain't
no mud like that ’tween here and the store!

[Annie is silent .]

What's the matter with you — can’t you talk?

ANNIE

Ah walked down the road a little piece with Jack.

JANE

Ah sent you to the store! Ah didn't send you to walk with
Jack!

ANNIE

We wanted to talk.

JANE

Talk about what? [Annie is silent.] What you doin'
cryin'?

ANNIE

Ah ain't cryin'.

JANE

You been cryin'! Can't Ah see where the tears been runnin'
down your face?

[Annie looks down.]

Now what you been cryin' about?

[Annie is silent.]

Don’t you hear me talkin’ to you?

[Annie is still silent. Pause . Almost in tears herself .]

182 THE O^EW ChfEGRO

Is there anything between you and Jack Carter?

[Annie bends her head still lower. Jane leans closer ,
trying to look into Annie’s face, and speaks almost
pleadingly .]

For mercy’s sake, child, tell me if anything’s wrong between
you and Jack!

[ Unable to keep silent any longer , Annie, with a quick
look at Carter, who has been an attentive listener ,
hides her face with her arms and runs out towards the
stairway . Jane turns to Carter and speaks excitedly. ]

You see how things is, Ben Carter! You see!

[She follows Annie out and Carter, who has half risen
from his chair , sits again perplexed. There is a silence
until Ruth’s laughter is heard as she is being chased
about the yard by Alec. Presently she runs in and
goes towards the stairs with Alec after her. He stops
m surprise and starts out when he sees Carter, but
Carter rises. \

CARTER

[As Alec starts out.]

Alec!

[Alec stops and looks at him without speaking .]

What you got against me, Alec?

ALEC

Ah ain’t got nothin’ particular against you.

CARTER

You ain’t friendly.

ALEC

Ah ain’t got much cause to be friendly.

CARTER

Me and your people here been livin’ side by side for years
and we always got along all right, but you always seem like
you’re mad.

P(EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

183

ALEC

I cain’t help that — that ain’t nuthin’ ter do with me.

CARTER

Yer mother jus’ told me — ’twas cause that accident — y’
member — that accident ’bout Joe — Well, you know I didn’t
mean to do it, don’t yer?

ALEC

You done it just the same, and you can’t expect me to go
around laughin’ and grinnin’ afterwards.

CARTER

You might speak to a person on the road.

ALEC

If ma old man had ’a’ shot your boy, Jack, down out a tree
like you done Joe, would you be so friendly? Would you be
laughin’ and grinnin’ at us on the road?

CARTER

Ain’t no use o’ bringin’ up nothin’ like that.

ALEC

Ah know it ain’t. The shoe always fits awkward on the other
foot. If he had ’a’ done that to your boy, Jack, he’d ’a’ been
lucky to get off with a hund’ed years in the pen.

CARTER

After what happened I done all I could.

ALEC

You compromised with that fool daddy o’ mine for a
hund’ed dollars to drink hisself to death with, and that’s two
counts against you.

[He goes quickly back to the yard without awaiting Car¬
ter’s reply. Carter is still standing by the table when
Jane comes downstairs.]

1 84 THE JVC EW V(EGRO

JANE

[ Controlling herself with an effort.]

It’s true, Ben Carter, just like Ah was scared it was.

CARTER

What’s true?

JANE

Annie’s in trouble, and it’s Jack.

CARTER

How do you know it’s Jack?

JANE

[Looking straight at him.]

She just told me!

That ain’t no proof.

CARTER

JANE

[Advancing to him and shaking her finger in his face.]
Wait a minute, Ben Carter! Wait right there! Ah ain’t
goin’ to have you throwin’ out no slurs about ma child! She
says it’s Jack, and Jack it is! This is the third thing that’s
happened to us on account o’ you and your’n! And this time
you’re goin’ to pay! If you compermise this time you’re goin’
to compermise for somethin’!

CARTER

I’m a fair man, Jane Lee; you know that. And if Jack’s in
fault I’ll do all I kin do, but I won’t be bullied. I’ve got to
know he’s in fault.

Jack is in fault!

JANE

CARTER

Your gal must be in fault, too.

3\ CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

185

JANE

Ah ain’t denyin’ that!

CARTER

She must ’a’ liked him a little or it wouldn’t ’a’ happened.

JANE

And he must ’a’ liked huh a little, too!

CARTER

Why should I have to pay, then, if she’s as much to blame
as he is?

JANE

You kin stand there and talk like that if you want to, but
if Ah’d say let’s punish ’em both and make ’em get married
you’d set up a big howl !

CARTER

Wouldn’t I have a right to?

JANE

Ah don’t know that you would! She’s as good as he is, and
it wouldn’t be the first time that ever happened in these parts!

CARTER

But it ain’t goin’ to happen this time.

JANE

Ah know it ain’t, and that ain’t what Ah’m after. Ah don’t
believe in no forced marriages.

What is you after?

CARTER

JANE

Ah want you to do somethin’ for ma children to make up
for the harm that’s come to us by you and yours.

1 86

THE V(EW C^EGRO

CARTER

I’ll do what’s reasonable, but it’s got to be fair. I ain’t for
makin’ enemies.

JANE

Then, educate ma children.

CARTER

What you mean?

JANE

Ah mean pay for Alec and Ruth to go to school. That’s
been ma plan all the time but you spoiled it when you shot Joe.

CARTER

Ain’t you askin’ a whole lot, Jane?

JANE

Askin’ a whole lot! You think you kin pay for Joe’s life
with a little money? You think you kin pay for Annie bein’
ruined with a little money?

CARTER

I ain’t tryin’ to pay for neither one. I just want to be fair.

JANE

Three of us is done for on account o’ you all, but Ah won’t
count that no good husband o’ mine. Just count the two chil¬
dren, Joe and Annie. Now — don’t you think you ought to do
somethin’ for us?

CARTER

That’s what I’m willin’ to do.

JANE

Look at me and look at yourself. Ah’m a lone woman and
poor with three children; you’re one o’ the richest men in the
county, if not the richest, with a wife and one child. Does

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 187

that seem fair to you, Ben Carter ; when Ah’m just as honest
as you and just as good a Christian?

CARTER

Ain’t nobody denyin’ about you bein’ honest, and ain’t no¬
body denyin’ about you bein’ a good Christian.

JANE

Where’s ma reward for bein’ honest and bein’ good?

CARTER

I reckon you’ll get your reward in heaven.

JANE

Ah know that well enough ; but Ah want ma children to
have somethin’ in this worl’.

CARTER

I can’t blame you much for that. I’ll talk to my wife and
Jack, and I reckon we kin come to terms.

[He starts out.]

JANE

Wait a minute.

[She brings out the gun again. ]

Ah believe you mean to be fair, and Ah want to show you
that Ah mean to be fair. This old gun’s loaded, and when
Alec finds out what’s happened Ah can’t tell what he might
do. The Lawd hisself moughtn’t be able to hold him back
this time — so Ah’ll unload it.

[She unloads the gun and puts the cartridges in her
bosom.]

CARTER

All right, Jane, I see you mean well and I’ll do what I kin
for you. ’Deed I will, Jane.

[He goes out. She puts the gun back and returns to the
table where she sits weakly , and , losing control of her¬
self , breaks into a flood of tears. Presently Alec
enters from the yard} bringing an armful of wood.]

1 8 8

THE U^EW C^EGRO

ALEC

What’s the good o’ lettin’ Ben Carter come in here and drink
our coffee up every day or so? He don’t give you nothin’ for it,

does he, or nothin’ much, I’ll bet -

[She looks up and he notices her tears.]

What you doin’ — cryin’?

JANE

Nothin’. Ah ain’t feelin’ good.

ALEC

[Putting the wood on the bench. ]
What’s the matter?

JANE

Don’t ask a lot o’ questions, now. Ah ain’t feelin’ good.
[With this she goes through the door which leads to the
stairs. Ruth passes her in the doorway and stops to
look around at her.]

ALEC

[Calling Ruth in subdued tones.]
Come here.

[Going to him.]
What you want?

RUTH

ALEC

What’s the matter with Ma?

RUTH

Ah don’t know. Why?

ALEC

Ah found huh in here cryin’.

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

189

RUTH

Ah don’t know what’s the matter ’less she’s cryin’ about
Annie.

ALEC

[Going closer and sneaking more earnestly.]

What’s the matter with Annie?

RUTH

Seems like somethin’s between huh and Jack Carter.

ALEC

Somethin’ what?

RUTH

Ah don’t know what. She was standin’ down the road cryin’
while she was talkin’ to him.

[Alec goes out towards the stairway and Ruth goes to
the door and stands looking out. Presently Alec re¬
turns. He has heard the had news and his face is set.
He looks first towards the place where the gun is, then
towards Ruth.]

alec

[In a husky voice.]

Ma wants you to bring huh a dipper 0’ water up there.

[Ruth goes out through the kitchen and Alec quickly
gets the gun and goes outside. Presently Jane comes
from towards the stairway and, not seeing anyone, goes
to the door and looks out. Ruth returns from the
kitchen with a dipper of water.]

ruth

Here’s the water.

JANE

[Looking at her puzzled.]
What water?

190

THE 5\ CEW WIEGRO

RUTH

Alec said you wanted a dipper o’ water.

JANE

Alec! Where’s Alec?

RUTH

He was in here a minute ago.

JANE

Where’s he now?

RUTH

Ah don’t know ’m.

[Jane looks quickly In the flace and finds that the gun is
no longer there. \

JANE

He’s got the gun, but, thank Gawd, he can’t do no harm.
It ain’t loaded.

RUTH

What’s he got the gun for?

JANE

He’s got his temper up. You know how Alec is when he
gets his temper up.

RUTH

Ah believe he fooled me out o’ here so he could get out
with the gun.

JANE

He’ll be back in a minute.

RUTH

What’s he got his temper up about? Is it about Annie?

Yes.

JANE

^CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

191

RUTH

When Ah asked you a while ago you said there wasn’t nothin’
between Annie and Jack.

JANE

[Moving to the door to get away from Ruth’s questions. \
Ah didn’t know it then.

[There is a 'pause and Jane changes the subject .]

How’d you like to go away to school?

RUTH

Ah’d sure be glad to.

JANE

Ah’m goin’ to see if Ah can’t send you away.

RUTH

How you goin’ to send me away, poor as we is.

JANE

That’s all right, Ah’m goin’ to find a way. Ah’m goin’ to
find a way for you and Alec both to go.

RUTH

How about Annie?

JANE

[With a catch in her voice. ]

Ah reckon Annie’ll stay home with me.

[Alec backs into the doorway with the gun in his hand.
He is holding it by the barrel as one would hold a club.
Still looking outside he has not seen those in the room. ]

JANE

Where you been with that gun?

ALEC

[Turning quickly. \

Ah went out fer Jack Carter, an’ Ben Carter, too. Who’s
been foolin’ with this gun?

192

THE O^EW 2(EGR0

JANE

What you want to shoot him for? Ain’t Ah already comper-
mised?

ALEC

[Very angrily.\

Compermised! What good will it do to compermise? You
compermised about Joe and didn’t get nothin’ out o’ that, did
yuh?

JANE

Your fool daddy done that! Ah ’ll get somethin’ out o’
this!

ALEC

What you think you goin’ to get?

JANE

Ah made Ben Carter give his word to educate you and Ruth,
and Ben Carter always keeps his word.

ALEC

You won’t edjercate me with any o’ his money! Ah won’t
have it!

JANE

Why won’t you?

ALEC

Ah just won’t, that’s all!

JANE

Ah ’ll see that you will! Ah know Ah ain’t wasted all ma
breath on Ben Carter for nothin’!

ALEC

He ain’t goin’ to give you nothin’, nohow. Not after what
Ah done to Jack!

NiEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

193

JANE

[Going to him and catching him by the arm,]
Done to Jack! What did you do to Jack?

ALEC

Ah fixed him even if the gun wasn’t loaded.

JANE

Fixed him, how?

ALEC

[Shown g her.]

Ah made a swipe at his head with this gun and he th’owed
his arm er he’d ’a’ got it proper, but Ah bet Ah broke sumpin’.

JANE

Beat Jack up after Ah compermised with his daddy?

ALEC

Ah’d ’a’ broke his head if he hadn’t ’a’ been down. Ah
didn’t hit him but one lick j but it was a good ’un.

JANE

Now you are in a mess, Alec Lee. Ben Carter’ll put the
sheriff on you sure! Get out o’ here and go to Aunt Dinah’s
and hide!

ALEC

[Slowly 'putting the gun away.]

Hide for what! He didn’t hide after he shot Joe, did he?

JANE

That’s diff’ent! Can’t you see that’s diff’ent! He ain’t
goin’ to let you beat Jack up and get away with it! Get out
o’ here and hide till this thing blows over!

[Alec starts outside.]

194

THE V(EW 5\ (EGRO

JANE

[Catching him hy the arm.]

Not that ’a way!

[ Pointing to the door which leads to the stairway. \

Go thV there and jump out o’ the back window so nobody
won’t see you!

[Alec goes through the door which leads to the stairs .]

[ Fondling Ruth.]

You’ll get educated just the same, Ruth 5 see if you don’t.
Ben Carter’ll keep his word!

RUTH

Ah don’t know what he’ll do after what Alec’s done.

JANE

Yes, he will. He ain’t never broke his word.

[Carter, hatless and coatless , rushes in angrily .]

CARTER

What kind o’ business is this, Jane Lee?

JANE

What?

CARTER

That boy o’ yours broke Jack’s arm! I’m goin’ to put the
sheriff on him sure as a gun’s iron!

JANE

Put the sheriff on him what for? You know Alec’s hot¬
headed!

CARTER

Hot-headed or not hot-headed! He’ll go up for it if he’s
caught! And that bargain I made with you about sendin’
’em to school is all off! It don’t go! Wasn’t nothin’ in it
about breakin’ ma boy’s arm! I’m done with you! I’m done
with you all — ’ceptin’ Alec — Yer hear me.

[He hurries out.]

S^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

195

JANE

[Running to the door and calling him.]

Ben Carter! Ben Carter!

[As he does not answer , she slowly returns to Ruth, then
takes the cartridges out of her bosomy where she has
tucked them. She looks for the gun — 'picks it up — sits
down at centre table — starts to reload it — fumbles the
cartridges — and then suddenly as she says “Oh Lawd”
puts them in her bosom again. ]

I oughtn’t ’a’ compermised. I oughtn’t ’a’ compermised.

[Suddenly.]

Ruth, come here.

Ruth, yer must help mammy get Alec’s things tergether, —
quick, yer hear. We must get Alec out o’ here. Ben Carter
shan t get Alec. 1 11 face him myself, an’ I don’t mean no
foolin’ this time.

[As she begins to stuff Alec’s clothes into a valise ,

Curtain.

“ Roily Jordan > Roll ”

MUSIC

“An* the stars began to fall”

THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS

Alain Locke

The Spirituals are really the most characteristic product of
the race genius as yet in America. But the very elements which
make them uniquely expressive of the Negro make them at
the same time deeply representative of the soil that produced
them. Thus, as unique spiritual products of American life,
they become nationally as well as racially characteristic. It
may not be readily conceded now that the song of the Negro
is America’s folk-song ; but if the Spirituals are what we think
them to be, a classic folk expression, then this is their ultimate
destiny. Already they give evidence of this classic quality.
Through their immediate and compelling universality of ap¬
peal, through their untarnishable beauty, they seem assured of
the immortality of those great folk expressions that survive
not so much through being typical of a group or representative
of a period as by virtue of being fundamentally and everlast-
ingly human. This universality of the Spirituals looms more
and more as they stand the test of time. They have outlived
the particular generation and the peculiar conditions which pro¬
duced them; they have survived in turn the contempt of the
slave owners, the conventionalizations of formal religion, the
repressions of Puritanism, the corruptions of sentimental bal-
ladry, and the neglect and disdain of second-generation respect¬
ability. They have escaped the lapsing conditions and the
fragile vehicle of folk art, and come firmly into the context
of formal music. Only classics survive such things.

In its disingenuous simplicity, folk art is always despised and
rejected at first; but generations after, it flowers again and
transcends the level of its origin. The slave songs are no ex¬
ception; only recently have they come to be recognized as ar¬
tistically precious things. It still requires vision and courage

200

THE C^EW C^E G R 0

to proclaim their ultimate value and possibilities. But while
the first stage of artistic development is yet uncompleted, it
appears that behind the deceptive simplicity of Negro song lie
the richest undeveloped musical resources anywhere available.
Thematically rich, in idiom of rhythm and harmony richer
still, in potentialities of new musical forms and new technical
traditions so deep as to be accessible only to genius, they have
the respect of the connoisseur even while still under the senti¬
mental and condescending patronage of the amateur. Proper
understanding and full appreciation of the Spirituals, in spite
of their present vogue, is still rare. And the Negro himself
has shared many of the common and widespread limitations of
view with regard to them. The emotional intuition which has
made him cling to this folk music has lacked for the most part
that convinced enlightenment that eventually will treasure the
Spirituals for their true musical and technical values. And al¬
though popular opinion and the general conception have
changed very materially, a true estimate of this body of music
cannot be reached until many prevailing preconceptions are
completely abandoned. For what general opinion regards as
simple and transparent about them is in technical ways, though
instinctive, very intricate and complex, and what is taken as
whimsical and child-like is in truth, though naive, very pro¬
found.

It was the great service of Dr. Du Bois in his unforgettable
chapter on the Sorrow Songs in The Souls of the Black Folk
to give them a serious and proper social interpretation, just as
later Mr. Krehbiel in his Afro-American Folk Songs gave
them their most serious and adequate musical analysis and in¬
terpretation. The humble origin of these sorrow songs is too
indelibly stamped upon them to be ignored or overlooked.
But underneath broken words, childish imagery, peasant sim¬
plicity, lies, as Dr. Du Bois pointed out, an epic inten¬
sity and a tragic profundity of emotional experience, for
which the only historical analogy is the spiritual experience
of the Jews and the only analogue, the Psalms. Indeed they
transcend emotionally even the very experience of sorrow out
of which they were born} their mood is that of religious exal-

201

* CEGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

tation, a degree of ecstasy indeed that makes them in spite of
the crude vehicle a classic expression of the religious emotion.
They lack the grand style, but never the sublime effect. Their
words are colloquial, but their mood is epic. They are primi¬
tive, but their emotional artistry is perfect. Indeed, spiritually
evaluated, they are among the most genuine and outstanding
expressions of Christian mood and feeling, fit musically and
emotionally, if not verbally, of standing with the few Latin
hymns, the handful of Gregorian tunes, and the rarest of Ger¬
man chorals as a not negligible element in the modicum of
strictly religious music that the Christian centuries have pro¬
duced.

Perhaps there is no such thing as intrinsically religious
music j certainly the traceable interplay of the secular and the
religious in music would scarcely warrant an arbitrary opinion
in the matter. And just as certainly as secular elements can
be found in all religious music are there discoverable sensuous
and almost pagan elements blended into the Spirituals. But
something so intensely religious and so essentially Christian
dominates the blend that they are indelibly and notably of this
quality. The Spirituals are spiritual. Conscious artistry and
popular conception alike should never rob them of this herit¬
age, it is untrue to their tradition and to the folk genius to
give them another tone. That they are susceptible of both
crude and refined secularization is no excuse. Even though
their own makers worked them up from the “shout” and the
rhythmic elements of the sensuous dance, in their finished form
and basic emotional effect all of these elements were completely
sublimated in the sincere intensities of religious seriousness.
To call them Spirituals and treat them otherwise is a travesty.

It was the Negro himself who first took them out of their
original religious setting, but he only anticipated the inevitable
by a generation for the folk religion that produced them is
rapidly vanishing. Noble as the purpose of this transplanting
was, damage was done to the tradition. But we should not be
ungrateful, for surely it was by this that they were saved to
posterity at all. Nevertheless it was to an alien atmosphere
that the missionary campaigning of the Negro schools and

202

THE F(EW C^EGRO

colleges took these songs. And the concert stage has but taken
them an inevitable step further from their original setting.
We should always remember that they are essentially congre¬
gational, not theatrical, just as they are essentially a choral not
a solo form. In time, however, on another level, they will get
back to this tradition, — for their next development will
undoubtedly be, like that of the modern Russian folk music,
their use in the larger choral forms of the symphonic choir,
through which they will reachieve their folk atmosphere and
epic spirituality.

It is a romantic story told in the Story of the Jubilee Singers ,
and retold in Professor Work’s Folk Song of the American
Negro; the tale of that group of singers who started out from
Fisk University in 1871, under the resolute leadership of
George L. White, to make this music the appeal of the strug¬
gling college for philanthropic support. With all the cash in
the Fisk treasury, except a dollar held back by Principal Adam
K. Spence, the troupe set out to Oberlin, where, after an un¬
successful concert of current music, they instantly made^ an
impression by a program of Negro Spirituals. Henry Ward
Beecher’s invitation to Brooklyn led to fame for the singers,
fortune for the college, but more important than these things,
recognition for the Spirituals. Other schools, Hampton, At¬
lanta, Calhoun, Tuskegee joined the movement, and spread the
knowledge of these songs far and wide in their concert cam¬
paigns. Later they recorded and published important collec¬
tions of them. They thus were saved over that critical period
of disfavor in which any folk product is likely to be snuffed
out by the false pride of the second generation. Professoi
Work rightly estimates it as a service worth more racially and
nationally than the considerable sums of money brought to
these struggling schools. Indeed, as he says, it saved a folk
art and preserved as no other medium could the folk tempera¬
ment, and by maintaining them introduced the Negro to him¬
self. Still the predominant values of this period in estimating
the Spirituals were the sentimental, degenerating often into
patronizing curiosity on the one side, and hectic exhibitionism on
the other. Both races condescended to meet the mind of the

Z^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 203

Negro slave, and even while his moods were taking their hearts
by storm, discounted the artistry of genius therein.

It was only as the musical appreciation of the Spirituals grew
that this interest changed and deepened. Musically I think the
Spirituals are as far in advance of their moods as their moods
are in advance of their language. It is as poetry that they are
least effective. Even as folk poetry, they cannot be highly
rated.. But they do have their quaint symbolisms, and flashes,

sometimes sustained passages of fine imagery, as in the much
quoted

I know moonlight, I know starlight
I lay dis body down

I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard
To lay dis body down.

I lay in de grave a n’ stretch out my arms,

I lay dis body down.

I go to de judgment in de evenin’ of de day
When I lay dis body down,

An5 my soul an’ yo’ soul will meet de day
I lay dis body down.

Bright sparkles in de churchyard
Give light unto de tomb 5
Bright summer, spring’s over —

Sweet flowers in their bloom.

My mother once, my mother twice, my mother,
she’ll rejoice,

In the Heaven once, in the Heaven twice
she’ll rejoice.

IMay the Lord, He will be glad of me
In the Heaven, He’ll rejoice.

or again

My Lord is so high, you can’t get over Him,

My Lord is so low, you can’t get under Him,

You must come in and through de Lamb.

204 THE Kew ^KEGRO

In the latter passages, there is a naivete, and also a faith and
fervor, that are mediaeval. Indeed one has to go to the
Middle Ages to find anything quite like this combination of
childlike simplicity of thought with strangely consummate
artistry of mood. A quaintly literal, lisping, fervent Chris¬
tianity, we feel it to be the evangelical and Protestant counter¬
part of the naive Catholicism of the tenth to the thirteenth
centuries. And just as there we had quaint versions of Ber¬
nard of Clairvaux and Saint Francis in the Virgin songs and
Saints Legends, so here we have Bunyan and John Wesley per¬
colated through a peasant mind and imagination, and concen¬
trated into something intellectually less, but emotionally more
vital and satisfying. If the analogy seems forced, remember
that we see the homely colloquialism of the one through the
glamorous distance of romance, and of the other, through the
disillusioning nearness of social stigma and disdain. How
regrettable though, that the very qualities that add charm to
the one should arouse mirthful ridicule for the other.

Over-keen sensitiveness to this reaction, which will com¬
pletely pass within a half generation or so, has unfortunately
caused many singers and musicians to blur the dialect and pun¬
gent colloquialisms of the Spirituals so as not to impede with
irrelevant reactions their proper artistic and emotional effect.
Some have gone so far as to advocate the abandonment of the
dialect versions to insure their dignity and reverence. But for
all their inadequacies, the words are the vital clues to the
moods of these songs. If anything is to be changed, it should
be the popular attitude. One thing further may be said,
without verging upon apologetics, about their verbal form. In
this broken dialect and grammar there is almost invariably an
unerring sense of euphony. Mir. Work goes so far as to sug¬
gest — rightly, I think — that in many instances the dropped,
elided, and added syllables, especially the latter, are a matter
of instinctive euphonic sense following the requirements of
the musical rhythm, as, for example, “The Blood came
a twinklin’ down” from “The Crucifixion” or “Lying there
fo’ to be heal” from “Blind Man at the Pool.” Mr. Work
calls attention to the extra beat syllable, as in “De trumpet

WiEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 205

soun’s it m-a’ my soul,” which is obviously a singing device
a. subtle Phrase-molding element from a musical point of
view, even if on verbal surface value, it suggests illiteracy.

rom this point of view we have essentially four classes the
almost ritualistic prayer songs or pure Spirituals, the freer and
more unrestrained evangelical “shouts” or camp-meeting songs,
the folk ballads so overlaid with the tradition of the Spirituals
proper that their distinctive type quality has almost been un-
noticed until lately, and the work and labor songs of strictly
secular character. In choral and musical idiom closely related
these song types are gradually coming to be regarded as more
and more separate, with the term Spiritual reserved almost
exclusively for the songs of intensest religious significance and
unction. Indeed, in the pure Spirituals one can trace the
broken fragments of an evangelical folk liturgy, with confes¬
sion, exhortation, “mourning,” conversion and “love-feast”
rejoicing as the general stages of a Protestant folk-mass. The
instinctive feeling for these differences is almost wholly lost,

. 11 ™.U squire the most careful study of the communal life
is it still lingers in isolated spots to set the groupings even
ipproximately straight. Perhaps after all the final appeal will
lave to be made to the sensitive race interpreter, but at present
nany a half secularized ballad is mistaken for a “spiritual ”
md many a camp-meeting shout for a folk hymn. It is not
1 question of religious content or allusion,— for the great ma-
|0rity of the Negro songs have this— but a more delicate ques-
•ion of caliber of feeling and type of folk use. From this im-

3°^nt P°int of v!ew> Negro folk song has yet to be studied.

1 he distinctiveness of the Spirituals after all, and their finest

204 THE JiEW CMiEGRO

In the latter passages, there is a naivete, and also a faith and
fervor, that are mediseval. Indeed one has to go to the
Middle Ages to find anything quite like this combination of
childlike simplicity of thought with strangely consummate
artistry of mood. A quaintly literal, lisping, fervent Chris¬
tianity, we feel it to be the evangelical and Protestant counter¬
part of the naive Catholicism of the tenth to the thirteenth
centuries. And just as there we had quaint versions of Ber¬
nard of Clairvaux and Saint Francis in the Virgin songs and
Saints Legends, so here we have Bunyan and John Wesley per¬
colated through a peasant mind and imagination, and concen¬
trated into something intellectually less, but emotionally more
vital and satisfying. If the analogy seems forced, remember
that we see the homely colloquialism of the one through the
glamorous distance of romance, and of the other, through the
disillusioning nearness of social stigma and disdain. How
regrettable though, that the very qualities that add charm to
the one should arouse mirthful ridicule for the other.

Over-keen sensitiveness to this reaction, which will com¬
pletely pass within a half generation or so, has unfortunately
caused many singers and musicians to blur the dialect and pun¬
gent colloquialisms of the Spirituals so as not to impede with
irrelevant reactions their proper artistic and emotional effect.
Some have gone so far as to advocate the abandonment of the
dialect versions to insure their dignity and reverence. But for
all their inadequacies, the words are the vital clues to the
moods of these songs. If anything is to be changed, it should
be the popular attitude. One thing further may be said,
without verging upon apologetics, about their verbal form. In
this broken dialect and grammar there is almost invariably an
unerring sense of euphony. Mr. Work goes so far as to sug¬
gest — rightly, I think — that in many instances the dropped,
elided, and added syllables, especially the latter, are a matter
of instinctive euphonic sense following the requirements of
the musical rhythm, as, for example, “The Blood came
a twinklin’ down” from “The Crucifixion” or “Lying there
fo’ to be heal” from “Blind Man at the Pool.” Mr. Work
calls attention to the extra beat syllable, as in “De trumpet

W.EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 205

soun’s it in-a’ my soul,” which is obviously a singing device,
a. subtle phrase-molding element from a musical point of
view, even if on verbal surface value, it suggests illiteracy.

Emotionally, these folks songs are far from simple. They
are not only spread over the whole gamut of human moods,
with the traditional religious overtone adroitly insinuated in
each instance, but there is further a sudden change of mood in
the single song, baffling to formal classification. Interesting
and intriguing as was Dr . Du Bois’s analysis of their emotional
themes, modern interpretation must break with that mode of
analysis, and relate these songs to the folk activities that they
motivated, classifying them by their respective song-types.
From this point of view we have essentially four classes, the
almost ritualistic prayer songs or pure Spirituals, the freer and
more unrestrained evangelical “shouts” or camp-meeting songs,
the folk ballads so overlaid with the tradition of the Spirituals
proper that their distinctive type quality has almost been un¬
noticed until lately, and the work and labor songs of strictly
secular character. In choral and musical idiom closely related
these song types are gradually coming to be regarded as more
and more separate, with the term Spiritual reserved almost
exclusively for the songs of intensest religious significance and
function. Indeed, in the pure Spirituals one can trace the
broken fragments of an evangelical folk liturgy, with confes¬
sion, exhortation, “mourning,” conversion and “love-feast”
rejoicing as the general stages of a Protestant folk-mass. The
instinctive feeling for these differences is almost wholly lost,
and it will require the most careful study of the communal life
as it still lingers in isolated spots to set the groupings even
approximately straight. Perhaps after all the final appeal will
have to be made to the sensitive race interpreter, but at present
many a half secularized ballad is mistaken for a “spiritual ”
and many a camp-meeting shout for a folk hymn. It is not
a question of religious content or allusion,— for the great ma¬
jority of the Negro songs have this— but a more delicate ques¬
tion of caliber of feeling and type of folk use. From this im-
portant point of view, Negro folk song has yet to be studied.

The distinctiveness of the Spirituals after all, and their finest

20 6

THE V(EW CNIEGRO

meaning resides in their musical elements. It is pathetic to
notice how late scientific recording has come to the task of
preserving this unique folk art. Of course the earlier four-
part hymn harmony versions were travesties of the real folk
renditions. All competent students agree in the utter dis¬
tinctiveness of the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements
in this music. However, there is a regrettable tendency, though
a very natural one in view of an inevitable bias of technical in¬
terest, to over-stress as basically characteristic one or other of
these elements in their notation and analysis. Weldon John¬
son thinks the characteristic beauty of the folk song is harmonic,
in distinction to the more purely rhythmic stress in the secular
music of the Negro, which is the basis of “ragtime and jazz ;
while Krehbiel, more academically balances these elements, re¬
garding the one as the African component in them, and the
other as the modifying influence of the religious hymn. “In
the United States,” he says, “the rhythmic element, though still
dominant, has yielded measurably to the melodic, the dance
having given way to religious worship, sensual bodily move¬
ment to emotional utterance.” But as a matter of fact, if we
separate or even over-stress either element in the Spirituals,
the distinctive and finer effects are lost. Strain out and em¬
phasize the melodic element a la Foster, and you get only the
sentimental ballad ; emphasize the harmonic idiom, and you
get a cloying sentimental glee; over-emphasize the rhythmic
idiom and instantly you secularize the product into syncopated
dance elements. It is the fusion, and that only, that is finely
characteristic; and so far as possible, both in musical settings
and in the singing of the Negro Spirituals, this subtle balance
of musical elements should be sought after and maintained.
The actual mechanics of the native singing, with its syllabic
quavers, the off-tones and tone glides, the improvised inter¬
polations and, above all, the subtle rhythmic phrase balance, has
much to do with the preservation of the vital qualities of these

songs.

Let us take an example. There is no more careful and ap¬
preciative student of the Spirituals than David Guion; as far
as is possible from a technical and outside approach, he has bent

207

y(EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

his skill to catch the idiom of these songs. But contrast his ver¬
sion of “God’s Goin’ to Set Dis WorP on Fire” with that of
Roland Hayes. The subtler rhythmic pattern, the closer
phrase linkage, the dramatic recitative movement, and the
rhapsodic voice glides and quavers of the great Negro tenor’s
version are instantly apparent. It is more than a question of

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musicianship, it is a question of feeling instinctively qualities
put there by instinct. In the process of the art development
of this material the Negro musician has not only a peculiar
advantage but a particular function and duty. Maintaining
spiritual kinship with the best traditions of this great folk art,
he must make himself the recognized vehicle of both its trans¬
mission and its further development.

At present the Spirituals are at a very difficult point in their
musical career; for the moment they are caught in the transi¬
tional stage between a folk-form and an art-form. Their in¬
creasing concert use and popularity, as Carl Van Vechten has
clearly pointed out in a recent article, has brought about a dan¬
gerous tendency toward sophisticated over-elaboration. At the
same time that he calls attention to the yeoman service of Mr.
Henry T. Burleigh in the introduction of the Spirituals to the
attention and acceptance of the concert stage, Mr. Van Vechten
thinks many of his settings tincture the folk spirit with added
concert furbelows and alien florid adornments. This is true.
Even Negro composers have been perhaps too much influenced

208

THE C^EW C^EGRO

by formal European idioms and mannerisms in setting these
songs. But in calling for the folk atmosphere, and insisting
upon the folk quality, we must be careful not to confine this
wonderfully potential music to the narrow confines of “simple
versions” and musically primitive molds. While it is proper
to set up as a standard the purity of the tradition and the
maintenance of idiom, it is not proper to insist upon an arbi¬
trary style or form. When for similar reasons, Mr. Van Vech-
ten insists in the name of the folk spirit upon his preference
for the “evangelical renderings” of Paul Robeson’s robust and
dramatic style as over against the subdued, ecstatic and spiritu¬
ally refined versions of Roland Hayes, he overlooks the fact
that the folk itself has these same two styles of singing, and
in most cases discriminates according to the mood, occasion and
song type, between them. So long as the peculiar quality of
Negro song is maintained, and the musical idiom kept unadul¬
terated, there is and can be no set limitation. Negro folk song
is not midway its artistic career as yet, and while the preser¬
vation of the original folk forms is for the moment the most
pressing necessity, an inevitable art development awaits them,
as in the past it has awaited all other great folk music.

The complaint to be made is not against the art development
of the Spirituals, but against the somewhat hybrid treatment
characteristic of the older school of musicians. One of the
worst features of this period has been the predominance of solo
treatment and the loss of the vital sustained background of ac¬
companying voices. In spite of the effectiveness of the solo
versions, especially when competently sung by Negro singers,
it must be realized more and more that the proper idiom of
Negro folk song calls for choral treatment. The young Negro
musicians, Nathaniel Dett, Carl Diton, Ballanta Taylor, Ed¬
ward Boatner, Hall Johnson, Lawrence Brown and others,
while they are doing effective solo settings, are turning back
gradually to the choral form. Musically speaking, only the
superficial resources in this direction have been touched as yetj
just as soon as the traditional conventions of four-part harmony
and the oratorio style and form are broken through, we may
expect a choral development of Negro folk song that may equal

V^A>

Roland

Hayes

VN j N Uu V

I JJ

O^EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS 209

or even outstrip the phenomenal choral music of Russia. With
its harmonic versatility and interchangeable voice parts, Negro
music is only conventionally in the four-part style, and with its
skipped measures and interpolations it is at the very least
potentially polyphonic. It can therefore undergo without
breaking its own boundaries, intricate and original development
in directions already the line of advance in modernistic music.

Indeed one wonders why something vitally new has not
already been contributed by Negro folk song to modern choral
and orchestral musical development. And if it be objected that
it is too far a cry from the simple folk spiritual to the larger
forms and idioms of modern music, let us recall the folk song
origins of the very tradition which is now classic in European
music. Up to the present, the resources of Negro music have

been tentatively exploited in only one direction at a time, _

melodically here, rhythmically there, harmonically in a third
direction. A genius that would organize its distinctive elements
in a formal way would be the musical giant of his age. Such
a development has been hampered by a threefold tradition, each
aspect of which stands in the way of the original use of the
best in the Negro material. The dominance of the melodic
tradition has played havoc with its more original harmonic
features, and the oratorio tradition has falsely stereotyped and
overlaid its more orchestral choral style, with its intricate
threading in and out of the voices. Just as definitely in an¬
other direction has the traditional choiring of the orchestra
stood against the opening up and development of the Negro
and the African idioms in the orchestral forms. Gradually
these barriers are being broken through. Edgar Varese’s
Integrates , a “study for percussion instruments,” presented
last season by the International Composers’ Guild, suggests a
new orchestral technique patterned after the characteristic idiom
of the African “drum orchestra.” The modernistic, From
the Land of Dreams , by Grant Still, a young Negro composer
who is his student and protege, and Louis Grunberg’s setting
for baritone and chamber orchestra of Weldon Johnson’s The
Creation: a Negro Sermon , are experimental tappings in still
other directions into the rich veins of this new musical ore.

210

THE C^EW C^EGRO

In a recent article ( The Living Age , October, 1924), Darius
Milhaud sums up these characteristic traits as “the possibilities
of a thoroughgoing novelty of instrumental technique.” Thus
Negro music very probably has a great contribution yet to make
to the substance and style of contemporary music, both choral
and instrumental. If so, its thematic and melodic contributions
from Dvorak to Goldmark’s recent Negro Rhapsody and
the borrowings of rhythmical suggestions by Milhaud and
Stravinsky are only preluding experiments that have pro¬
claimed the value of the Negro musical idioms, but have not
fully developed them. When a body of folk music is really
taken up into musical tradition, it is apt to do more than con¬
tribute a few new themes. For when the rhythmic and har¬
monic basis of music is affected, it is more than a question of
superstructure, the very foundations of the art are in process
of being influenced.

In view of this very imminent possibility, it is in the interest
of musical development itself that we insist upon a broader
conception and a more serious appreciation of Negro folk song,
and of the Spiritual which is the very kernel of this distinctive
folk art. We cannot accept the attitude that would merely
preserve this music, but must cultivate that which would also
develop it. Equally with treasuring and appreciating it as
music of the past, we must nurture and welcome its contribu¬
tion to the music of to-morrow. Mr. Work has aptly put it in
saying: “While it is now assured that we shall always preserve
these songs in their original forms, they can never be the last
word in the development of our music. . . . They are the
starting point, not our goal; the source, not the issue, of our
musical tradition.”

jy \EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

211

Andante

Father Abraham

Ten it”

\ a r Fa>ther a * bra-ham sit-tin down side-a ob de ho-ly Lamb,

HdnmC °,?7 fAr0m Calhoun Plantation Songs.” Collected and edited
Hallo^e11* Arranged by H. T. Burleigh. Reprinted by permission
G. Schirmer Co., from Afro-American Folk Songs , by H. E. Krehbiel, 1914.

212

THE NiEW J(EGRO

Listen to de Lambs

A little faster (Mil. J = es) in strict rhythm

Reprinted by permission of G. Schirmer Co., from Negro Folk Songs , Vol. a,

recorded by Natalie Curtis Burlin, 1918.

W.EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

213

F&ster(M.M. «J=88) Very rhythmic and spirited. •UsMyoa first two beats)

/^Sol°^ In strict time. ff*

pm1

1. Come on,,

2. Come on,_

te===

sis-ter.widyo’ ups an' downs, Wanl t. „0 t' Hea-v’n when I
sis-ter, an* a-dont be ’shame, *

jy?-v Q-. 1,1 ~

rqrjhrPfftS

Want t’ go t’ Hea-vto when I

•^Ijyiyyyyi

Want t’ go t’ itea-v’nwhen I

f/Or

r'P'PTfT

Want t’ go t’ Hea-v’n when I

Slower Reoit:ft«/V<?ff rhythm, tenderly

Solo a>tfA much expression) Ifl strict rhythm (M.M .4 = 88)'

_ -= =— ^ ^ Chorus D.C.'

P^r fir ' P^ffTr-r-^ 1 P ’Qf) Pp

die. A"-Slswait-in; fo’ t; giveyou crown Wantt. g0 Hea-v'nwhenI die.
A m- gels wait-in’ fo’ t’ write vo’ names. 6

Wanti’ go t’ Hea-v’nwhenI die.

NEGRO DANCERS

Claude McKay

Lit with cheap colored lights a basement den,

With rows of chairs and tables on each side,

And, all about, young, dark-skinned women and men
Drinking and smoking, merry, vacant-eyed.

A Negro band, that scarcely seems awake,

Drones out half-heartedly a lazy tune,

While quick and willing boys their orders take
And hurry to and from the near saloon.

Then suddenly a happy, lilting note

Is struck, the walk and hop and trot begin,

Under the smoke upon foul air afloat ;

Around the room the laughing puppets spin
To sound of fiddle, drum and clarinet,

Dancing, their world of shadows to forget.

JTis best to sit and gaze; my heart then dances
To the lithe bodies gliding slowly by,

The amorous and inimitable glances

That subtly pass from roguish eye to eye,

The laughter gay like sounding silver ringing,

That fills the whole wide room from floor to ceiling, —
A rush of rapture to my tried soul bringing —

The deathless spirit of a race revealing.

Not one false step, no note that rings not true!

Unconscious even of the higher worth
Of their great art, they serpent-wise glide through
The syncopated waltz. Dead to the earth
And her unkindly ways of toil and strife,

For them the dance is the true joy of life.

214

y(EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

And yet they are the outcasts of the earth,

A race oppressed and scorned by ruling man 5
How can they thus consent to joy and mirth
Who live beneath a world-eternal ban?

No faith is theirs, no shining ray of hope,

Except the martyr’s faith, the hope that death
Some day will free them from their narrow scope
And once more merge them with the infinite breath.
But, oh ! they dance with poetry in their eyes
Whose dreamy loveliness no sorrow dims,

And parted lips and eager, gleeful cries,

And perfect rhythm in their nimble limbs.

The gifts divine are theirs, music and laughter 5
All other things, however great, come after.

A A

JAZZ AT HOME

J. A. Rogers

Jazz is a marvel of paradox: too fundamentally human, at
least as modern humanity goes, to be typically racial, too inter¬
national to be characteristically national, too much abroad in the
world to have a special home. And yet jazz in spite of it all
is one part American and three parts American Negro, and
was originally the nobody’s child of the levee and the city
slum. Transplanted exotic — a rather hardy one, we admit —
of the mundane world capitals, sport of the sophisticated, it is
really at home in its humble native soil wherever the modern
unsophisticated Negro feels happy and sings and dances to his
mood. It follows that jazz is more at home in Harlem than
in Paris, though from the look and sound of certain quarters
of Paris one would hardly think so. It is just the epidemic
contagiousness of jazz that makes it, like the measles, sweep
the block. But somebody had to have it first: that was the
Negro.

What after all is this taking new thing, that, condemned
in certain quarters, enthusiastically welcomed in others, has
nonchalantly gone on until it ranks with the movie and the
dollar as a foremost exponent of modern Americanism? Jazz

216

217

P^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

isn’t music merely, it is a spirit that can express itself in almost
anything. The true spirit of jazz is a joyous revolt from con¬
vention, custom, authority, boredom, even sorrow — from every¬
thing that would confine the soul of man and hinder its riding
free on the air. The Negroes who invented it called their
songs the “Blues,” and they weren’t capable of satire or decep¬
tion. Jazz was their explosive attempt to cast off the blues
and be happy, carefree happy, even in the midst of sordidness
and sorrow. And that is why it has been such a balm for
modern ennui, and has become a safety valve for modern
machine-ridden and convention-bound society. It is the revolt
of the emotions against repression.

The story is told of the clever group of “Jazz-specialists”
who, originating dear knows in what scattered places, had found
themselves and the frills of the art in New York and had been
drawn to the gay Bohemias of Paris. In a little cabaret of
Montmartre they had just “entertained” into the wee small
hours fascinated society and royalty ; and, of course, had been
paid royally for it. Then, the entertainment over and the
guests away, the “entertainers” entertained themselves with
their very best, which is always impromptu, for the sheer joy
of it. That is jazz.

In its elementals, jazz has always existed. It is in the Indian
war-dance, the Highland fling, the Irish jig, the Cossack dance,
the Spanish fandango, the Brazilian maxixey the dance of the
whirling dervish, the hula hula of the South Seas, the danse du
ventre of the Orient, the carmagnole of the French Revolution,
the strains of Gypsy music, and the ragtime of the Negro. Jazz
proper, however, is something more than all these. It is a
release of all the suppressed emotions at once, a blowing off of
the lid, as it were. It is hilarity expressing itself through
pandemonium y musical fireworks.

The direct predecessor of jazz is ragtime. That both are
atavistically African there is little doubt, but to what extent
it is difficult to determine. In its barbaric rhythm and exuber¬
ance there is something of the bamboula, a wild, abandoned
dance of the West African and the Haytian Negro, so stirringly
described by the anonymous author of Untrodden Fields of

2l8

THE NIEW y(EGRO

Anthropology , or of the ganza ceremony so brilliantly de¬
picted in Maran’s Batouala. But jazz time is faster and
more complex than African music. With its cowbells, auto
horns, calliopes, rattles, dinner gongs, kitchen utensils, cymbals,
screams, crashes, clankings and monotonous rhythm it bears all
the marks of a nerve-strung, strident, mechanized civilization.
It is a thing of the jungles — modern man-made jungles.

The earliest jazz-makers were the itinerant piano players
who would wander up and down the Mississippi from saloon
to saloon, from dive to dive. Seated at the piano with a care¬
free air that a king might envy, their box-back coats flowing
over the stool, their Stetsons pulled well over their eyes, and
cigars at an angle of forty-five degrees, they would “whip the
ivories” to marvellous chords and hidden racy, joyous mean¬
ings, evoking the intense delight of their hearers who would
smother them at the close with huzzas and whiskey. Often
wholly illiterate, these humble troubadours knowing nothing
of written music or composition, but with minds like cameras,
would listen to the rude improvisations of the dock laborers
and the railroad gangs and reproduce them, reflecting perfectly
the sentiments and the longings of these humble folk. The
improvised bands at Negro dances in the South, or the little
boys with their harmonicas and jews’-harps, each one putting
his own individuality into the air, played also no inconsiderable
part in its evolution. “Poverty,” says J. A. Jackson of the
Billboard , “compelled improvised instruments. Bones, tam¬
bourines, make-shift string instruments, tin can and hollow
wood effects, all now utilized as musical novelties, were among
early Negroes the product of necessity. When these were not
available ‘patting juba5 prevailed. Present-day ‘Charleston5 is
but a variation of this. Its early expression was the ‘patting5
for the buck dance.55

The origin of the present jazz craze is interesting. More
cities claim its birthplace than claimed Homer dead. New
Orleans, San Francisco, Memphis, Chicago, all assert the
honor is theirs. Jazz, as it is to-day, seems to have come into
being this way, however: W. C. Handy, a Negro, having
digested the airs of the itinerant musicians referred to, evolved

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 219

the first classic, ’Memphis Blues. . Then came Jasbo
Brown, a reckless musician of a Negro cabaret in Chicago, who
played this and other blues, blowing his own extravagant moods
and risque interpretations into them, while hilarious with gin.
To give further meanings to his veiled allusions he would
make the trombone “talk” by putting a derby hat and later a
tin can at its mouth. The delighted patrons would shout,
“More, Jasbo. More, Jas, more.” And so the name origi¬
nated.

As to the jazz dance itself: at this time Shelton Brooks, a
Negro comedian, invented a new “strut,” called “Walkin’ the
Dog.” Jasbo’s anarchic airs found in this strut a soul mate.
Then as a result of their union came “The Texas Tommy,”
the highest point of brilliant, acrobatic execution and nifty foot¬
work so far evolved in jazz dancing. The latest of these dances
is the “Charleston,” which has brought something really new
to the dance step. The “Charleston” calls' for activity of the
whole body. One characteristic is a fantastic fling of the legs
from the hip downwards. The dance ends in what is known
as the “camel-walk” — in reality a gorilla-like shamble — and
finishes with a peculiar hop like that of the Indian war dance.
Imagine one suffering from a fit of rhythmic ague and you have
the effect precisely.

The cleverest “Charleston” dancers perhaps are urchins of
five and six who may be seen any time on the streets of Harlem,
keeping time with their hands, and surrounded by admiring
crowds. But put it on a well-set stage, danced by a bobbed-
hair chorus, and you have an effect that reminds you of the
abandon of the Furies. And so Broadway studies Harlem.
Not all of the visitors of the twenty or more well-attended
cabarets of Harlem are idle pleasure seekers or underworld
devotees. Many are serious artists, actors and producers seek¬
ing something new, some suggestion to be taken, too often in
pallid imitation, to Broadway’s lights and stars.

This makes it difficult to say whether jazz is more char¬
acteristic of the Negro or of contemporary America. As was
shown, it is of Negro origin plus the influence of the American
environment. It is Negro-American. Jazz proper, however, is

220

THE D\ CEGRO

in idiom — rhythmic, musical and pantomimic — thoroughly
American Negro ; it is his spiritual picture on that lighter
comedy side, just as the spirituals are the picture on the tragedy
side. The two are poles apart, but the former is by no means
to be despised and it is just as characteristically the product of
the peculiar and unique experience of the Negro in this country.
The African Negro hasn’t it, and the Caucasian never could
have invented it. Once achieved, it is common property, and
jazz has absorbed the national spirit, that tremendous spirit of
go, the nervousness, lack of conventionality and boisterous
good-nature characteristic of the American, white or black, as
compared with the more rigid formal natures of the English¬
man or German.

But there still remains something elusive about jazz that
few, if any of the white artists, have been able to capture.
The Negro is admittedly its best expositor. That elusive some¬
thing, for lack of a better name, I’ll call Negro rhythm. The
average Negro, particularly of the lower classes, puts rhythm
into whatever he does, whether it be shining shoes or carrying
a basket on the head to market as the Jamaican women do.
Some years ago while wandering in Cincinnati I happened upon
a Negro revival meeting at its height. The majority present
were women, a goodly few of whom were white. Under the
influence of the “spirit” the sisters would come forward and
strut — much of jazz enters where it would be least expected.
The Negro women had the perfect jazz abandon, while the
white ones moved lamely and woodenly. This same lack of
spontaneity is evident to a degree in the cultivated and inhibited
Negro.

In its playing technique, jazz is similarly original and spon¬
taneous. The performance of the Negro musicians is much
imitated, but seldom equalled. Lieutenant Europe, leader of
the famous band of the “Fifteenth New York Regiment,” said
that the bandmaster of the Garde Republicaine, amazed at his
jazz effects, could not believe without demonstration that his
band had not used special instruments. Jazz has a virtuoso
technique all its own: its best performers, singers and players,
lift it far above the level of mere “trick” or mechanical effects.

221

W.EGRO TOUTH SPEAKS

Abbie Mitchell, Ethel Waters, and Florence Mills; the Blues
singers, Clara, Mamie, and Bessie Smith; Eubie Blake, the
pianist; “Buddy” Gilmore, the drummer, and “Bill” Robin¬
son, the pantomimic dancer to mention merely an illustrative
few — are inimitable artists, with an inventive, improvising skill
that defies imitation. And those who know their work most
intimately trace its uniqueness without exception to the folk-
roots of their artistry.

Musically jazz has a great future. It is rapidly being sub¬
limated. In the more famous jazz orchestras like those of
Will Marion Cook, Paul Whiteman, Sissle and Blake, Sam
Stewart, Fletcher Henderson, Vincent Lopez and the Clef
Club units, there are none of the vulgarities and crudities of
the lowly origin or the only too prevalent cheap imitations.
The pioneer work in the artistic development of jazz was done
by Negro artists; it was the lead of the so-called “syncopated
orchestras of Tyers and Will Marion Cook, the former play-
mg ^or the Castles of dancing fame, and the latter touring as
a concertizing orchestra in the great American centers and
abroad. Because of the difficulties of financial backing, these
expert combinations have had to yield ground to white orches¬
tras of the type of the Paul Whiteman and Vincent Lopez
organizations that are now demonstrating the finer possibilities
of jazz music. “Jazz,” says Serge Koussevitzky, the new con¬
ductor of the Boston Symphony, “is an important contribution
to modern musical literature. It has an epochal significance—
it is not superficial, it is fundamental. Jazz comes from the
soil, where all music has its beginning.” And Leopold Stokow¬
ski says more extendedly of it:

“Jazz has come to stay because it is an expression of the
times, of the breathless, energetic, superactive times in
which we are living, it is useless to fight against it.
Already its new vigor, its new vitality is beginning to
manifest itself. . . . America’s contribution to the music
of the past will have the same revivifying effect as the
injection of new, and in the larger sense, vulgar blood
into dying aristocracy. Music will then be vulgarized in

222

THE C^EW 2(EGR0

the best sense of the word, and enter more and more into
the daily lives of people. . . . The Negro musicians of
America are playing a great part in this change. They
have an open mind, and unbiassed outlook. They are not
hampered by conventions or traditions, and with their new
ideas, their constant experiment, they are causing new
blood to flow in the veins of music. The jazz players
make their instruments do entirely new things, things fin¬
ished musicians are taught to avoid. They are pathfinders
into new realms.”

And thus it has come about that serious modernist music
and musicians, most notably and avowedly in the work of the
French modernists Auric, Satie and Darius Milhaud, have be¬
come the confessed debtors of American Negro jazz. With
the same nonchalance and impudence with which it left the
levee and the dive to stride like an upstart conqueror, almost
overnight, into the grand salon, jazz now begins its conquest
of musical Parnassus.

Whatever the ultimate result of the attempt to raise jazz
from the mob-level upon which it originated, its true home is
still its original cradle, the none too respectable cabaret. And
here we have the seamy side to the story. Here we have some
of the charm of Bohemia, but much more of the demoralization
of vice. Its rash spirit is in Grey’s popular song, Runnin ’
Wild:

Runnin5 wild; lost control
Runnin5 wild; mighty bold,

Feelin5 gay and reckless too
Carefree all the time; never blue
Always goin5 I don’t know where
Always showin5 that I don’t care
Don5 love nobody, it ain’t worth while
All alone; runnin5 wild.

Jazz reached the height of its vogue at a time when minds
were reacting from the horrors and strain of war. Humanity
welcomed it because in its fresh joyousness men found a tern-

&CEGRO YOUTH SPEAKS 223

porary forgetfulness, infinitely less harmful than drugs or
alcohol. It is partly for some such reasons that it dominates
the amusement life of America to-day. No one can sensibly
condone its excesses or minimize its social danger if uncon¬
trolled j all culture is built upon inhibitions and control. But
it is doubtful whether the “jazz-hounds” of high and low
estate would use their time to better advantage. In all prob¬
ability their tastes would find some equally morbid, mischievous
vent. Jazz, it is needless to say, will remain a recreation for
the industrious and a dissipater of energy for the frivolous, a
tonic for the strong and a poison for the weak.

For the Negro himself, jazz is both more and less dangerous
than for the white — less, in that he is nervously more in tune
with it; more, in that at his average level of economic develop¬
ment his amusement life is more open to the forces of social
vice. The cabaret of better type provides a certain Bohemian-
lsm for the Negro intellectual, the artist and the well-to-do.
But the average thing is too much the substitute for the saloon
and the wayside inn. The tired longshoreman, the porter, the
housemaid and the poor elevator boy in search of recreation,
seeking in jazz the tonic for weary nerves and muscles, are only
too apt to find the bootlegger, the gambler and the demi-monde

who have come there for victims and to escape the eyes of the
police.

. Yet in sPite of its present vices and vulgarizations, its sex
informalities, its morally anarchic spirit, jazz has a popular
mission to perform. Joy, after all, has a physical basis. Those
who laugh and dance and sing are better off even in their vices
than those who do not. Moreover, jazz with its mocking dis¬
regard for formality is a leveller and makes for democracy.
The jazz spirit, being primitive, demands more frankness and
sincerity Just as it already has done in art and music, so
eventually in human relations and social manners, it will no
doubt have the effect of putting more reality in life by taking
some of the needless artificiality out. . . . Naturalness finds
the artificial in conduct ridiculous. “Cervantes smiled Spain's
c lvalry away,” said Byron. And so this new spirit of joy and
spontaneity may itself play the role of reformer. Where at

224 THE KEW C^EGRO

present it vulgarizes, with more wholesome growth in the
future, it may on the contrary truly democratize. At all events,
jazz is rejuvenation, a recharging of the batteries of civilization
with primitive new vigor. It has come to. stay, and they are
wise, who instead of protesting against it, try to lift and divert
it into nobler channels,

SONG

I am weaving a song of waters,

Shaken from firm, brown limbs,

Or heads thrown back in irreverent mirth.
My song has the lush sweetness
Of moist, dark lips
Where hymns keep company
With old forgotten banjo songs.

Abandon tells you

That I sing the heart of a race

While sadness whispers

That I am the cry of a soul. . . .

A-shoutin’ in de ole camp-meetin’ place,
A-strummin’ o’ de ole banjo.

Singin’ in de moonlight,

Sobbin’ in de dark.

Singin’, sobbin’, strummin’ slow . . .

Singin’ slow; sobbin’ low.

Strummin’, strummin’, strummin’ slow. . . .

Words are bright bugles

That make the shining for my song,

And mothers hold brown babes
To dark, warm breasts
To make my singing sad.

A dancing girl with swaying hips
Sets mad the queen in a harlot’s eye.

Praying slave
Jazz band after
Breaking heart

To the time of laughter. . . .

Clinking chains and minstrelsy
Are welded fast with melody.

A praying slave

With a jazz band after . . .

Singin’ slow, sobbin’ low.

Sun-baked lips will kiss the earth.

Throats of bronze will burst with mirth.

Sing a little faster,

Sing a little faster!

— Gwendolyn B. Bennett.

JAZZ0N1A

Langston Hughes

Oh, silver tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaret

Six long-headed jazzers play.

A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

Oh, singing tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve’s eyes
In the first garden
Just a bit too bold?

Was Cleopatra gorgeous
In a gown of gold?

Oh, shining tree!

Oh, silver rivers of the soul!

In a whirling cabaret

Six long-headed jazzers play.

226

C^EGRO YOUTH SPEAKS

227

NUDE YOUNG DANCER

What jungle tree have you slept under,
Midnight dancer of the jazzy hour?

What great forest has hung its perfume
Like a sweet veil about your bower?

What jungle tree have you slept under,

Dark brown girl of the swaying hips?

What star-white moon has been your lover?

To what mad faun have you offered your lips?

■BMM m

The Spirit of Africa

THE NEGRO DIGS UP HIS PAST

SERVITUTE, LI BERTA' rJ CHRIS¬
TIANA NON CONTR/xPJA.

0 V A M

ANNUENYE DEO T. ' JJ

Sui P»£tltl«

Viri Sutnme Revcrtndi fc? Cshhrnm

JOANNIS van den ffONERT, T. H. *».
S. S. Tb. Deft, bujufque Facuhatis , vt £? Hi for. Ecrf*
JiaJlica , in Academ . Prtfeff Gulin,

vec non Etc left? I eidcnfi Pajlnvis , ^

Publics placidsque difguifiticni fubjiciC
JACOBUS ELISA JOANNES CAPIT ElM, Afer,
Defensurus a u c t o r.

Ad diem 10. Martii, 3 borisQ.tf iQ.antt meridiem, tfbtrisi. IS Z-ttftmcrldicnt.

LUGBUN1 B ATAVOTLU M,

Apud SA Ml- E LEM LUCHTM ANS & FlllUH,
dwiemie JypgfflpbM: MDCCXLII#

THE NEGRO DIGS UP HIS PAST

Arthur A. Schomburg

The American Negro must remake his past in order to make
his future. Though it is orthodox to think of America as the
one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is a
luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social neces¬
sity for the Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply
compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote
for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away,
for it is the social damage of slavery that the present genera¬
tions must repair and offset. So among the rising democratic
millions we find the Negro thinking more collectively, more
retrospectively than the rest, and apt out of the very pressure
of the present to become the most enthusiastic antiquarian of
them all.

Vindicating evidences of individual achievement have as a
matter of fact been gathered and treasured for over a century:
Abbe Gregoire’s liberal-minded book on Negro notables in
1808 was the pioneer effort ; it has been followed at intervals
by less known and often less discriminating compendiums of
exceptional men and women of African stock. But this sort of
thing was on the whole pathetically over-corrective, ridiculously
over-laudatory j it was apologetics turned into biography. A
true historical sense develops slowly and with difficulty under
such circumstances. But to-day, even if for the ultimate pur¬
pose of group justification, history has become less a matter of
argument and more a matter of record. There is the definite
desire and determination to have a history, well documented,
widely known at least within race circles, and administered as
a stimulating and inspiring tradition for the coming generations.

Gradually as the study of the Negro’s past has come out
of the vagaries of rhetoric and propaganda and become sys-

tematic and scientific, three outstanding conclusions have been
established:

First, that the Negro has been throughout the centuries of
controversy an active collaborator, and often a pioneer, in the
struggle for his own freedom and advancement. This is true
to a degree which makes it the more surprising that it has not
been recognized earlier.

Second, that by virtue of their being regarded as something
“exceptional,” even by friends and well-wishers, Negroes of
attainment and genius have been unfairly disassociated from
the group, and group credit lost accordingly.

Third, that the remote racial origins of the Negro, far
from being what the race and the world have been given to
understand, offer a record of credible group achievement when
scientifically viewed, and more important still, that they are
of vital general interest because of their bearing upon the
beginnings and early development of human culture.

With such crucial truths to document and establish, an ounce
of fact is worth a pound of controversy. So the Negro his¬
torian to-day digs under the spot where his predecessor stood
and argued. Not long ago, the Public Library of Harlem
housed a special exhibition of books, pamphlets, prints and old
engravings, that simply said, to skeptic and believer alike, to
scholar and school-child, to proud black and astonished white,
“Here is the evidence.” Assembled from the rapidly growing
collections of the leading Negro book-collectors and research
societies, there were in these cases, materials not only for the
first true writing of Negro history, but for the rewriting of
many important paragraphs of our common American history.
Slow though it be, historical truth is no exception to the
proverb.

Here among the rarities of early Negro Americana was
Jupiter Hammon’s Address to the Negroes of the State of
New York, edition of 1787, with the first American Negro
poet’s famous “If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find
nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves.”
Here was Phyllis Wheatley’s Mss. poem of 1767 addressed
to the students of Harvard, her spirited encomiums upon

African Phantasy: Awakening

THE NJZGRQ T>IGS UP HIS PAST 233

George Washington and the Revolutionary Cau4e, and John
MarrantVSt. John’s Day eulogy to the “Brothers of African
Lodge No. 459” delivered at Boston in 1789. Here too were
Lemuel Haynes’ Vermont commentaries on the American
Revolution and his learned sermons to his white congregation
in Rutland, Vermont, and the sermons of the year 1 808 by the
Rev. Absalom Jones of St. Thomas Church, Philadelphia, and
Peter Williams of St. Philip’s, New York, pioneer Episcopal
rectors who spoke out in daring and influential ways on the
Abolition of the Slave Trade. Such things and many others
are more than mere items of curiosity: they educate any re¬
ceptive mind.

Reinforcing these were still rarer items of Africana and
foreign Negro interest, the volumes of Juan Latino, the best
Latinist of Spain in the reign of Philip V, incumbent of the
chair of Poetry at the University of Granada, and author of
Poems printed there in 1573 and a book on the Escurial pub¬
lished 1576; the Latin and Dutch treatises of Jacobus Eliza
Capitein, a native of West Coast Africa and graduate of the
University of Leyden, Gustavus Vassa’s celebrated autobi¬
ography that supplied so much of the evidence in 1796 for
Granville Sharpe’s attack on slavery in the British colonies,
Julien Raymond’s Paris expose of the disabilities of the free
people of color in the then (1791) French colony of Hayti,
and Baron de Vastey’s Cry of the Fatherland , the famous
polemic by the secretary of Christophe that precipitated the
Haytian struggle for independence. The cumulative effect of
such evidences of scholarship and moral prowess is too weighty
to be dismissed as exceptional.

But weightier surely than any evidence of individual talent
and scholarship could ever be, is the evidence of important
collaboration and significant pioneer initiative in social service
and reform, in the efforts toward race emancipation, coloniza¬
tion and race betterment. From neglected and rust-spotted
pages comes testimony to the black men and women who stood
shoulder to shoulder in courage and zeal, and often on a parity
of intelligence and talent, with their notable white benefactors.
There was the already cited work of Vassa that aided so ma-

234 THE D^EW ViEGRO

terially the efforts o£ Granville Sharpe, the record of Paul
Cuffee, the Negro colonization pioneer, associated so impor¬
tantly with the establishment of Sierra Leone as a British
colony for the occupancy of free people of color in West
Africa j the dramatic and history-making expose of John Bap¬
tist Phillips, African graduate of Edinburgh, who compelled
through Lord Bathhurst in 1824 the enforcement of the articles
of capitulation guaranteeing freedom to the blacks of Trinidad.
There is the record of the pioneer colonization project of Rev.
Daniel Coker in conducting a voyage of ninety expatriates to
West Africa in 1820, of the missionary efforts of Samuel
Crowther in Sierra Leone, first Anglican bishop of his diocese,
and that of the work of John Russwurm, a leader in the work
and foundation of the American Colonization Society.

When we consider the facts, certain chapters of American
history will have to be reopened. Just as black men were in¬
fluential factors in the campaign against the slave trade, so
they were among the earliest instigators of the abolition move¬
ment. Indeed there was a dangerous calm between the agita¬
tion for the suppression of the slave trade and the beginning
of the campaign for emancipation. During that interval
colored men were very influential in arousing the attention of
public men who in turn aroused the conscience of the country.
Continuously between 1808 and 1845, men like Prince
Saunders, Peter Williams, Absalom Jones, Nathaniel Paul, and
Bishops Varick and Richard Allen, the founders of the two
wings of African Methodism, spoke out with force and initia¬
tive, and men like Denmark Vesey (1822), David Walker
(1828) and Nat Turner (1831) advocated and organized
schemes for direct action. This culminated in the generally
ignored but important conventions of Free People of Color
in New York, Philadelphia and other centers, whose platforms
and efforts are to the Negro of as great significance as the
nationally cherished memories of Faneuil and Independence
Halls. Then with Abolition comes the better documented and
more recognized collaboration of Samuel R. Ward, William
Wells Brown, Henry Highland Garnett, Martin Delaney,
Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass

THE !\EGRO VI GS UP HIS PAST 23 5

with their great colleagues, Tappan, Phillips, Sumner, Mott,
Stowe and Garrison.

But even this latter group who came within the limelight
of national and international notice, and thus into open com¬
parison with the best minds of their generation, the public too
often regards as a group of inspired illiterates, eloquent echoes
of their Abolitionist sponsors. For a true estimate of their
ability and scholarship, however, one must go with the anti¬
quarian to the files of the Anglo- African Magazine , where
page by page comparisons may be made. Their writings show
Douglass, McCune Smith, Wells Brown, Delaney, Wilmot
Blyden and Alexander Crummell to have been as scholarly and
versatile as any of the noted publicists with whom they were
associated. All of them labored internationally in the cause of
their fellows ; to Scotland, England, France, Germany and
Africa, they carried their brilliant offensive of debate and
propaganda, and with this came instance upon instance of sig¬
nal foreign recognition, from academic, scientific, public and
official sources. Delaney’s Princi'pia of Ethnology won pub¬
lic reception from learned societies, Pennington’s discourses an
honorary doctorate from Heidelberg, Wells Brown’s three year
mission the entree of the salons of London and Paris, and the
tours of Frederick Douglass, receptions second only to Henry
Ward Beecher’s.

After this great era of public interest and discussion, it was
Alexander Crummell, who, with the reaction already setting in,
first organized Negro brains defensively through the founding
of the American Negro Academy in 1897 at Washington. A
New York boy whose zeal for education had suffered a rude
shock when refused admission to the Episcopal Seminary by
Bishop Onderdonk, he had been befriended by John Jay and
sent to Cambridge University, England, for his education and
ordination. On his return, he was beset with the idea of pro¬
moting race scholarship, and the Academy was the final result.
It has continued ever since to be one of the bulwarks of our
intellectual life, though unfortunately its members have had
to spend too much of their energy and effort answering de¬
tractors and disproving popular fallacies. Only gradually have

236 THE J^EW R^EGRO

the men of this group been able to work toward pure scholar¬
ship. Taking a slightly different start, The Negro Society
for Historical Research was later organized in New York, and
has succeeded in stimulating the collection from all parts of
the world of books and documents dealing with the Negro.
It has also brought together for the first time co-operatively
in a single society African, West Indian and Afro-American
scholars. Direct offshoots of this same effort are the extensive
private collections of Henry P. Slaughter of Washington, the
Rev. Charles D. Martin of Harlem, of Arthur Schomburg
of Brooklyn, and of the late John E. Bruce, who was the en¬
thusiastic and far-seeing pioneer of this movement. Finally
and more recently, the Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History has extended these efforts into a scientific
research project of great achievement and promise. Under
the direction of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, it has continuously
maintained for nine years the publication of the learned quar¬
terly, The Journal of Negro History , and with the assistance
and recognition of two large educational foundations has main¬
tained research and published valuable monographs in Negro
history. Almost keeping pace with the work of scholarship
has been the effort to popularize the results, and to place before
Negro youth in the schools the true story of race vicissitude,
struggle and accomplishment. So that quite largely now the
ambition of Negro youth can be nourished on its own milk.

Such work is a far cry from the puerile controversy and
petty braggadocio with which the effort for race history first
started. But a general as well as a racial lesson has been
learned. We seem lately to have come at last to realize what
the truly scientific attitude requires, and to see that the race
issue has been a plague on both our historical houses, and that
history cannot be properly written with either bias or counter¬
bias. The blatant Caucasian racialist with his theories and as¬
sumptions of race superiority and dominance has in turn bred
his Ethiopian counterpart — the rash and rabid amateur who
has glibly tried to prove half of the world’s geniuses to have
been Negroes and to trace the pedigree of nineteenth century
Americans from the Queen of Sheba. But fortunately to-day

THE CEGRO DIGS UP HIS PAST 237

there is on both sides of a really common cause less of the sand
of controversy and more of the dust of digging.

Of course, a racial motive remains — legitimately compatible
with scientific method and aim. The work our race students
now regard as important, they undertake very naturally to
overcome in part certain handicaps of disparagement and omis¬
sion too well-known to particularize. But they do so not
merely that we may not wrongfully be deprived of the spiritual
nourishment of our cultural past, but also that the full story
of human collaboration and interdependence may be told and
realized. Especially is this likely to be the effect of the latest
and most fascinating of all of the attempts to open up the
closed Negro past, namely the important study of African
cultural origins and sources. The bigotry of civilization which
is the taproot of intellectual prejudice begins far back and must
be corrected at its source. Fundamentally it has come about
from that depreciation of Africa which has sprung up from
ignorance of her true role and position in human history and
the early development of culture. The Negro has been a man
without a history because he has been considered a man without
a worthy culture. But a new notion of the cultural attainment
and potentialities of the African stocks has recently come about,
partly through the corrective influence of the more scientific
study of African institutions and early cultural history, partly
through growing appreciation of the skill and beauty and in
many cases the historical priority of the African native crafts,
and finally through the signal recognition which first in France
and Germany, but now very generally, the astonishing art of
the African sculptures has received. Into these fascinating new
vistas, with limited horizons lifting in all directions, the mind
of the Negro has leapt forward faster than the slow clearings
of scholarship will yet safely permit. But there is no doubt
that here is a field full of the most intriguing and inspiring pos¬
sibilities. Already the Negro sees himself against a reclaimed
background, in a perspective that will give pride and self-re¬
spect ample scope, and make history yield for him the same
values that the treasured past of any people affords.

AMERICAN NEGRO FOLK
LITERATURE

Arthur Huff Fauset

Most people are acquainted with Negro Folk Literature
even if they do not recognize it as such. There are few chil¬
dren who have not read the Uncle Remus stories of Joel
Chandler Harris, which were based upon the original folk
tales of the African slaves. But the great storehouse from
which they were gleaned, that treasury of folk lore which the
American Negro inherited from his African forefathers, is
little known. It rivals in amount as well as in quality that
of any people on the face of the globe, and is not confined to
stories of the Uncle Remus type, but includes a rich variety
of story forms, legends, saga cycles, songs, proverbs and phan-
tastic, almost mythical, material.

It simply happens that the one type of Negro story has struck
the popular fancy, and becoming better known, blurred out the
remaining types. For this result, we are indebted to Joel
Chandler Harris, who saw the popular possibilities of the
“B’rer Rabbit” tales, and with his own flair for literature,
adapted them with such remarkable skill and individuality
that to-day they rank with the best known and most highly
appreciated works of American literature.

Familiar as he was with his material, and with an instinct
for its value — even in his day these tales were fast disappear¬
ing among “modern” colored folk — his approach was never¬
theless that of the journalist and literary man rather than the
folk-lorist. “Written,” as has been said, “with no thought
of the ethnological bearing which critics were so quick to dis¬
cern in them, they established themselves at a bound as among
the most winsome of folk tales.” There is some possibility
of their having passed out unnoticed and thus being lost to

23S

THE y^EGRO T>IGS UP HIS PAST 239

posterity if he had not done the work which drew attention to
them. Yet in spite of the happy providence that produced a
Harris, and although his intentions were of the best, we are
forced to recognize the harm as well as the good that these
1 stories have done. This query may come as a shock to some,

I but on further analysis we shall see there is reason for won¬
dering.

In the first place, the Uncle Remus stories, as the Harris
tales have become known, are not folk tales, but adaptations.
This fact alone is enough to warrant some hesitancy about
placing them in the category of folk lore. To be sure, folk
lore was their background, but this can be said of many literary
works (Dracula, for example) which we would not think of
classifying with folk literature.

The misrepresentation goes further than simply the name,
however. The very dialect of the Uncle Remus Stories is
questionable, statements to the contrary notwithstanding.
Scholars have tried to show that Harris very faithfully re¬
corded the dialect of his time, in its truly intimate expressions,
mannerisms and colloquialisms, but it is doubtful whether
Negroes generally ever used the language employed in the
works of Joel Chandler Harris. Rather, in these works we
observe the consciously devised, artistically wrought, patiently
carved out expressions of a story writer who knew his art and
employed it well. They have too much the flavor of the
popular trend of contemporary writing of the Thomas Nelson
Page tradition, and though they endeavored to give a faithful
portrait of the Negro and did so more successfully than any
other of these Southern writers, it cannot be denied that such
portraits as they gave were highly romanticized, presenting an

interpretation of the Negro seen neither objectively nor real¬
istically.

These stories of Chandler Harris made and still make their
most powerful impression and appeal through the character of
Uncle Remus himself. But it is in just this projection into
the picture of this amiable and winsome ante-bellum personality
that contorts the Negro folk tale from its true plane. The
American Negro folk tale, borrowed as it most certainly was

240

THE CM^EW CMiEGRO

from Africa, is an animal cycle, recounting the exploits of
various members of the animal world of which “B’rer Rabbit”
was arch-villain or hero, as you please. As in the case of all
true folk tales, the story teller himself was inconsequential ; he
did not figure at all — a talking machine might serve the pur¬
pose just as well. As a result the stories take on an impersonal
character, more or less lacking in artistic embellishments. The
Uncle Remus stories break this tradition, however ; instead the
story teller plays an important, a too important, role. By that
very fact, this type of story ceases to be a folk tale; and be¬
comes in reality a product of the imagination of the author. Of
course there is such a thing as an intermediate type; there is
a place for Hans Andersen, and Brothers Grimm. But Harris,
familiar with his material and genuinely loving it, could not
be spiritually saturated with it under the circumstances. And
this was more a matter of class than race ; for human kinships
are spiritual after all, but these stories cannot present Negro
folk life and feeling seen and felt on its own level. Enough
has been said, perhaps, to show, without in any way detracting
from the true service and real charm of the Harris stories, that
there are enough incongruous elements insinuated into the sit¬
uation to make it impossible to accept them as a final rendering
of American Negro folk lore.

We would not be so much concerned about a “distinction
without a difference” if there were actually no difference. Un¬
fortunately the treatment of these stories by Harris resulted
in certain developments which are too noteworthy to pass by.
The most striking consequence of the fact that Uncle Remus
is written all over and interwoven into the stories which bear
his name, is that the Harris variety of the Negro folk tale
assumes to interpret Negro character instead of simply telling
his stories. The result is a composite picture of the ante-bel¬
lum Negro that fits exactly into the conception of the type
of Negro which so many white people would like to think once
existed, or even now exists; whereas in the material in ques¬
tion there is reflected a quite different folk temperament —
apart from the question of what is or what isn’t the Negro tem-

THE ytEGRO T>IGS UP HIS PAST 241

perament. When we find one critic naively suggesting that
Uncle Remus “makes clear to every thoughtful reader that
the system of slavery pernicious as it may appear to us now,
took the dusky savage from his haunts in the African jungle
and made of him a Christian and a gentleman,” we can clearly
see that any writing that can be taken as an apologia for a social
system, or the idealization of the plantation regime, cannot be
taken unsuspiciously as the chronicle of a primitive folk lore.

Nevertheless, Harris wrought well from the standpoint of
art, and by so doing let the world know that Negroes pos¬
sessed a rich folk lore. The unquestionable result of this was
a keener interest in the Negro and his lore. Just the same, the
intrusion of a dominant note of humor, not by any means as
general in the material as one would suppose, fell in line with
an arbitrary and unfortunately general procedure of regarding
anything which bore the Negro trademark as inherently comic
and only worth being laughed at. It is not necessary to draw
upon sentiment in order to realize the masterful quality of
some of the Negro tales: it is simply necessary to read them.
Moralism, sober and almost grim, irony, shrewd and frequently
subtle, are their fundamental tone and mood — as in the case of
their African originals — and the quaint and sentimental humor
so popularly prized is oftener than not an overtone merely. But
the unfortunate thing about American thought is the habit of
classifying first and investigating after. As a result this mis¬
representation of the temper and spirit of Negro folk lore has
become traditional, and for all we know, permanent.

There is strong need of a scientific collecting of Negro folk
lore before the original sources of this material altogether
lapse. Sentimental admiration and amateurish praise can never
adequately preserve or interpret this precious material. It is
precious in two respects — not only for its intrinsic, but for its
comparative value. Some of the precious secrets of folk
history are in danger of fading out in its gradual disappear¬
ance. American folk-lorists are now recognizing this, and sys¬
tematic scientific investigation has begun under the influence and
auspices of the Society for American Folk Lore and such com-

242 THE V^EW O^EGRO

petent ethnologists as Franz Boas, Elsie Clews Parsons, and
others.

Simply because we are considering Negro folk lore, we do
not say that it is superior to other folk material, nor even that
it is as great as any other folk literature ; but we do insist
that all folk material, in order to be appraised justly, must be
read and considered in the light of those values which go to
make up great folk literature. Briefly stated, these values are:

1. Lack of the self-conscious element found in ordinary
literature.

2. Nearness to nature.

3. Universal appeal.

Search the body of Negro folk literature and you will find
these characteristics dominant. To the African, as one writer
puts it, “All nature is alive, anthropomorphized as it were,
replete with intelligences 5 the whispering, tinkling, hissing,
booming, muttering, zooming around him are full of myste¬
rious hints and suggestions.” Out of this primitive intimacy of
the mind with nature come those naive personifications of the
rabbits, foxes and wolves, terrapins and turtles, buzzards and
eagles which make the animal lore of the world. Many tales
ascribed to lands far away find parallels in Negro stories bear¬
ing indubitable traces of African origin ; opening out into the
great question of common or separate origin. Fundamentally,
as Lang points out, they prove the common ancestry of man,
both with regard to his mental and cultural inheritance. Which¬
ever way the question is solved, the physical contacts of com¬
mon origins or the psychological similarities of common capacity
and endowment, it is essentially the same fundamental point in
the end — human kinship and universality. Yet there is much
that is distinctively African in animal lore, and of a quality
not usually conceded. The African proverb, in its terseness
and pith, the shrewd moralisms of the fables, the peculiar
whimsicality and turn to the imagination in many of the tales,
are notably outstanding. Clive Bell to the contrary, it is by
their intelligence, their profound and abstract underlying con¬
ceptions, that they possess a peculiar touch and originality that

Ancestral: a Type Study

THE C^EGRO "DIGS UP HIS PAST 243

is distinctively African. ^Esop, it is claimed was African, but
any folk-lorist knows that the African folk fable of indigenous
growth outmasters ^Esop over and over. Africa in a sense
is the home of the fable ; the African tales are its classics.

It is interesting, in this connection, to consider the case of
the rabbit, which figures so largely in Negro Folk Lore. It
was the belief of Harris, and still is the belief of many, that
the Negro chose the weak rabbit and glorified him in his stories
because this animal was a prototype of himself during slavery
times ; according to this theory, the stronger, more rapacious
animals such as wolves, foxes, etc., represented the white mas¬
ters. But this cannot be so, for as Ambrose E. Gonzales aptly
points out in his volume entitled, TEsop Along the Black
Border , these stories, or their types at least, came with the
Negro from Africa where they had existed for centuries. In
the African tales, the hare is the notable figure. Surely, then,
the rabbit is none other than the African hare. As a matter
of fact, the “B’rer Rabbit” character simply confirms the
opinion that Negro Folk Lore is a genuine part of world folk
literature, for we find the hare one of the animals most
frequently encountered in folk lore the world over. In
Scottish and Irish Tales he is associated with witches. In the
ancient Druidical mysteries the hare was employed in auguries
to indicate the outcome of war. Chinese and East Indian stories
feature the hare, and he is common even in the tales of the
American Indian. The Easter “bunny” shows the hare crop¬
ping up in a Teutonic atmosphere. So that when all these
instances are added to the African and American Negro we may
be reasonably safe in assuming that “B’rer Rabbit” comes into
American lore from the level of true primitive folk material.

The antiquity and authentic folk lore ancestry of the Negro
tale make it the proper subject for the scientific folk-lorist
rather than the literary amateur. It is the ethnologist, the
philologist and the student of primitive psychology that are
most needed for its present investigation. Of course no one
will deny or begrudge the delightful literary by-products of
this material. Negro writers themselves will shortly, no doubt,

244

THE CNiEW NIEGRO

be developing them as arduously as Chandler Harris, and we
hope as successfully, or even more so. But a literary treat¬
ment based on a scientific recording will have much fresh
material to its hand, and cannot transgress so far from the true
ways of the folk spirit and the true lines of our folk art.

T’APPIN 1 ( T errapin )

Told by Cugo Lewis , Plateauy Alabama. Brought to America

from West Coast Africa , 1859.

It was famine time an’ T’appin had six chillun. Eagle hide
bellin’ cloud an’ he went crossed de ocean an’ go gittin’ de palm
oil; got de seed to feed his chillun wid it. T’appin see it, say
ahol’ on, it har’ time. Where you git all dat to feed your
t’ree chillun? I got six chillun, can’t you show me wha’ you
git all dat food?” Eagle say, “No, I had to fly ’cross de ocean
to git dat.” T’appin say, “Well, gimme some o’ you wings
an’ I’ll go wid you.” Eagle say, “A’ right. When shall we
go?” T’appin say, “ ’Morrow morning’ by de firs’ cock crow.”
So ’morrow came but T’appin didn’ wait till mornin’. T’ree
’clock in de mornin’ T’appin come in fron’ Eagle’s house say,
“Cuckoo — cuckoo — coo.” Eagle say, “Oh, you go home. Lay
down. ’Tain’t day yit.” But he kep’ on, “Cuckoo, cuckoo,
coo,” an’ bless de Lor’, Eagle got out, say, “Wha’ you do
now?” T’appin say, “You put t’ree wings on this side an’ t’ree
on udda side.” Eagle pull out six feathers an’ put t’ree on one
side an’ t’ree on de udda. Say, “Fly, le’s see.” So T’appin
commence to fly. One o’ de wings fall out. But T’appin said,
“Da’s all right, I got de udda wings. Le’s go.” So dey flew
an’ flew; but when dey got over de ocean all de eagle wings
fell out. T’appin about to fall in de water. Eagle went out
an’ ketch him. Put him under his wings. T’appin say, “I
don’ like dis.” Eagle say, “Why so?” T’appin say, “Gee it
stink here.” Eagle let him drop in ocean. So he went down,
down, down to de underworl’. De king o’ de underworl’ meet
him. He say, “Why you come here? Wha’ you doin’ here?”
T’appin say, “King, we in te’bul condition on de earth. We
can’t git nothin’ to eat. I got six chillun an’ I can’t git nothin’

1 “T’appin” and “Brer Buzzard” were collected by Mr. Fauset in the South
August, 1925.

245

246 ‘THE u^EW Oi_EGRO

to eat for dem. Eagle he on’y got t’ree an’ he go ’cross de
ocean an’ git all de food he need. Please gimme sumpin’ so
I kin feed my chillun.” King say, “A’ right, a’ right, so he
go an’ give T’appin a dipper. He say to T’appin, “Take dis
dipper. When you want food for your chillun say:

Bakon coleh

Bakon cawbey

Bakon cawhubo lebe lebe.

So T’appin carry it home an’ go to de chillun. He say to dem,
“Come here.” When dey all come he say:

Bakon coleh

Bakon cawbey

Bakon cawhubo lebe lebe.

Gravy, meat, biscuit, ever’ting in de dipper. Chillun got
plenty now. So one time he say to de chillun, “Come here.
Dis will make my fortune. I’ll sell dis to de King.” So he
showed de dipper to de King. He say:

Bakon coleh

Bakon cawbey

Bakon cawhubo lebe lebe.

Dey got somet’ing. He feed ev’ryone. So de King went off,
he call ev’ryboda. Pretty soon ev’ryboda eatin’. So dey ate
an’ ate, ev’ryt’ing, meats, fruits, and all like dat. So he took
his dipper an’ went back home. He say, “Come, chillun.” He
try to feed his chillun $ nothin’ came. (You got a pencil dere,
ain’t you?) When it’s out it’s out. So T’appin say, “Aw
right, I’m going back to de King an’ git him to fixa dis up.”
So he went down to de underworl’ an’ say to de King, “King,
wha’ de matter? I can’t feeda my chillun no mora.” So de
King say to him, “You take dis cow hide an’ when you want

somepin’ you say:

Sheet n oun

n-jacko

nou o quaako.

THE P^EGRO TiIGS UP HIS PAST 247

So T’appin went off an’ he came to cross roads. Den he said
de magic:

Sheet n oun

n-jacko

nou o quaako.

De cowhide commence to beat um. It beat, beat. Cowhide
said, “Drop, drop.” So T’appin drop an’ de cowhide stop
beatin’. So he went home. He called his chillun in. He gim
um de cowhide an5 tell dem what to say, den he went out. De
chillun say:

Sheet n oun

n-jacko

nou o quaako.

De cowhide beat de chillun. It say, “Drop, drop.” Two
chillun dead an’ de others sick. So T’appin say, “I will go to
de King.” He calls de King, he call all de people. All de
people came. So before he have de cowhide beat, he has a
mortar made an’ gets in dere an’ gets all covered up. Den de
King say:

Sheet n oun

n-jacko

nou o quaako.

So de cowhide beat, beat. It beat everyboda, beat de King too.
Dat cowhide beat, beat, beat right t’roo de mortar wha’ was
T’appin an5 beat marks on his back, an* da’s why you never fin’
T’appin in a clean place, on’y under leaves or a log.

B’RER RABBIT FOOLS BUZZARD

Once upon a time B’rer Rabbit an’ B’rer Buzzard. Buzzard
say gonna shut up Rabbit five days until he starve to death.
So he put him in a hole an’ cover him up. Every day he come
to him an5 sing:

r r

-i — 1 —

-V p-

—

Diddledum-diddledum-day-day
Young man, I’m here.

B’rer Rabbit he sing it after him. Did that five days. Every
day Rabbit gittin’ lower an’ lower. B’rer Buzzard come ’round
an’ sing louder an’ louder:

Tf— ■ '

A p

ft N ,

r r

ft”* J 1

^ u t U t 1

— 1 — L

[— V ( j,-

Diddledum-diddledum-day-day
Young man, I’m here.

De las’ day Buzzard sing louder still ; but B’rer Rabbit he
very faint. He kin jes’ barely say:

0 -

- '

f . ^

L -

^ M » > f m *

Didd — le — dum — didd — le — dum

d — a — a - d — a — a

248

THE S\ CEGRO VI GS UP HIS PAST 249

So Buzzard decide it is time to take Rabbit home to his lit¬
tle ones. As he was carryin’ Rabbit to his little ones he said:

Diddledum-diddledum-day-day
Young man, here he.

All come ’round de table. Dey meant to eat him. Had
knives an’ everything, an’ were jes’ gonna cut him up when de
father said:

w-t U l

Diddledum-diddledum-day-day
Young man, let’s eat.

But jes’ den ol’ B’rer Rabbit jumped up from de table an’
said:

Diddledum-diddledum-day-day
Young man, I’m gone.

Stepped on a pin
Hit bent

That’s the way he went.

HERITAGE

Countee Cullen

What is Africa to me:

Copper sun, a scarlet sea,

Jungle star and jungle track,

Strong bronzed men and regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?

One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved
Spicy grove and banyan tree ,

What Is Africa to me?

Africa? A book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes.
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
By the river brink ; no more
Does the bugle-throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
From the scabbards where they slept.
Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear
Seek no covert in your fear
Lest a mortal eye should see:
What’s your nakedness to me?

All day long and all night through
One thing only I must do

250

THE NEGRO TUGS UP HIS PAST

Quench my pride and cool my blood,

Lest I perish in their flood,

Lest a hidden ember set
Timber that I thought was wet
Burning like the dryest flax,

Melting like the merest wax,

Lest the grave restore its dead.

Stubborn heart and rebel head.

Have you not yet realized
You and 1 are civilized ?

So I lie and all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive jungle herds,
Juggernauts of flesh that pass
Trampling tall defiant grass
Where young forest lovers lie
Plighting troth beneath the sky.

So I lie, who always hear
Though I cram against my ear
Both my thumbs, and keep them there,
Great drums beating through the air.

So I lie, whose fount of pride,

Dear distress, and joy allied,

Is my somber flesh and skin
With the dark blood dammed within.
Thus I lie, and find no peace
Night or day, no slight release
From the unremittent beat
Made by cruel padded feet,

Walking through my body’s street.

Up and down they go, and back
Treading out a jungle track.

So I lie, who never quite
Safely sleep from rain at night

251

252

THE JiEW J^EGRO

While its primal measures drip
Through my body, crying, “Strip!
Doff this new exuberance,

Come and dance the Lover’s Dance.”
In an old remembered way
Rain works on me night and day.
Though three centuries removed
From the scenes my fathers loved.

My conversion came high-priced.

I belong to Jesus Christ,

Preacher of humility:

Heathen gods are naught to me —
Quaint, outlandish heathen gods
Black men fashion out of rods,

Clay and brittle bits of stone,

In a likeness like their own.

“ Father , Son and Holy Ghost ”

Do I make an idle boast,

Jesus of the twice turned cheek,
Lamb of God, although I speak
With my mouth thus, in my heart
Do I not play a double part?

Ever at thy glowing altar
Must my heart grow sick and falter
Wishing He I served were black.
Thinking then it would not lack
Precedent of pain to guide it
Let who would or might deride it;
Surely then this flesh would know
Yours had borne a kindred woe.
Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
Daring even to give to You
Dark, despairing features where
Crowned with dark rebellious hair,
Patience wavers just so much as
Mortal grief compels, while touches

253

THE J^EGRO T)1GS UP HIS PAST

Faint and slow, of anger, rise
To smitten cheek and weary eyes.

Lord, forgive me if my need
Sometimes shapes a human creed.

THE LEGACY

OF THE ANCESTRAL ARTS1

Alain Locke

Music and poetry, and to an extent the dance, have been the
predominant arts of the American Negro. This is an emphasis
quite different from that of the African cultures, where the
plastic and craft arts predominate ; Africa being one of the
great fountain sources of the arts of decoration and design.
Except then in his remarkable carry-over of the rhythmic gift,
there is little evidence of any direct connection of the American
Negro with his ancestral arts. But even with the rude trans¬
planting of slavery, that uprooted the technical elements of his
former culture, the American Negro brought over as an emo¬
tional inheritance a deep-seated aesthetic endowment. And
with a versatility of a very high order, this offshoot of the
African spirit blended itself in with entirely different culture
elements and blossomed in strange new forms.

There was in this more than a change of art-forms and an
exchange of cultural patterns j there was a curious reversal of
emotional temper and attitude. The characteristic African art
expressions are rigid, controlled, disciplined, abstract, heavily
conventionalized 5 those of the Aframerican, — free, exuberant,
emotional, sentimental and human. Only by the misinterpre¬
tation of the African spirit, can one claim any emotional kin¬
ship between them — for the spirit of African expression, by
and large, is disciplined, sophisticated, laconic and fatalistic.
The emotional temper of the American Negro is exactly oppo¬
site. What we have thought primitive in the American Negro
— his naivete, his sentimentalism, his exuberance and his impro-
vizing spontaneity are then neither characteristically African nor
to be explained as an ancestral heritage. They are the result
of his peculiar experience in America and the emotional up-

1 Illustrations are from the Barnes Foundation Collection.

254

THE C^EGRO T>IGS UP HIS PAST 255

heaval of its trials and ordeals. True, these are now very char¬
acteristic traits, and they have their artistic, and perhaps even
their moral compensations ; but they represent essentially the
working of environmental forces rather than the outcropping
of a race psychology ; they are really the acquired and not the
original artistic temperament.

BUSHONGO

A further proof of this is the fact that the American Negro,
even when he confronts the various forms of African art ex¬
pression with a sense of its ethnic claims upon him, meets them
in as alienated and misunderstanding an attitude as the average
European Westerner. Christianity and all the other European
conventions operate to make this inevitable. So there would be
little hope of an influence of African art upon the western
African descendants if there were not at present a growing in-

256 THE U^EW C^EGRO

fluence of African art upon European art in general. But led
by these tendencies, there is the possibility that the sensitive
artistic mind of the American Negro, stimulated by a cultural
pride and interest, will receive from African art a profound
and galvanizing inAuence. The legacy is there at least, with
prospects of a rich yield. In the Arst place, there is in the
mere knowledge of the skill and unique mastery of the arts
of the ancestors the valuable and stimulating realization that
the Negro is not a cultural foundling without his own inherit¬
ance. Our timid and apologetic imitativeness and overburden¬
ing sense of cultural indebtedness have, let us hope, their nat¬
ural end in such knowledge and realization.

Then possibly from a closer knowledge and proper apprecia¬
tion of the African arts must come increased effort to develop
our artistic talents in the discontinued and lagging channels of
sculpture, painting and the decorative arts. If the forefathers
could so adroitly master these mediums, why not we? And
there may also come to some creative minds among us, hints
of a new technique to be taken as the basis of a characteristic
expression in the plastic and pictorial arts; incentives to new
artistic idioms as well as to a renewed mastery of these older
arts. African sculpture has been for contemporary European
painting and sculpture just such a mine of fresh motifs , just
such a lesson in simplicity and originality of expression, and
surely, once known and appreciated, this art can scarcely have
less inAuence upon the blood descendants, bound to it by a
sense of direct cultural kinship, than upon those who inherit by
tradition only, and through the channels of an exotic curiosity
and interest.

But what the Negro artist of to-day has most to gain from
the arts of the forefathers is perhaps not cultural inspiration
or technical innovations, but the lesson of a classic background,
the lesson of discipline, of style, of technical control pushed to
the limits of technical mastery. A more highly stylized art
does not exist than the African. If after absorbing the new
content of American life and experience, and after assimilating
new patterns of art, the original artistic endowment can be
suAiciently augmented to express itself with equal power in

SOUDAN-NIGER,

2 5S

THE ^CEW A CEGRO

more complex patterns and substance, then the Negro may
well become what some have predicted, the artist of American

life.

. • •

As it is, African art has influenced modern art most consid¬
erably. It has been the most influential exotic art of our era,

YABOUBA

Chinese and Japanese art not excepted. The African art
object, a half generation ago the most neglected of ethnological
curios, is now universally recognized as a “notable instance of
plastic representation,” a genuine work of art, masterful over
its material in a powerful simplicity of conception, design and
effect. This artistic discovery of African art came at a time
when there was a marked decadence and sterility in certain
forms of European plastic art expression, due to generations
of the inbreeding of style and idiom. Out of the exhaustion

THE 3\ CEGRO DIGS UP HIS PAST 259

of imitating Greek classicism and the desperate exploitation in
graphic art of all the technical possibilities of color by the
Impressionists and Post Impressionists, the problem of form
and decorative design became emphasized in one of those re-

IVORY COAST

actions which in art occur so repeatedly. And suddenly with
this new problem and interest, the African representation of
form, previously regarded as ridiculously crude and inade¬
quate, appeared cunningly sophisticated and masterful. Once
the strong stylistic conventions that had stood between it and
a true aesthetic appreciation were thus broken through, Negro
art instantly came into marked recognition. Roger Fry in an
essay on Negro Sculpture has the following to say: “I have
to admit that some of these things are great sculpture — greater,
■I think, than anything we produced in the Middle Ages. Cer-

260 THE C^EW NiEGRO

tainly they have the special qualities of sculpture in a higher
degree. They have indeed complete plastic freedom, that is
to say, these African artists really can see form in three dimen-

DAHOMEY

sions. Now this is rare in sculpture. . . . So — far from the
clinging to two dimensions, as we tend to do, the African artist
actually underlines, as it were, the three-dimensionalness of
his forms. It is in some such way that he manages to give to
his forms their disconcerting vitality, the suggestion that they

THE A CEGRO VI GS UP HIS PAST 261

make of being not mere echoes of actual figures, but of possess¬
ing an inner life of their own. . . . Besides the logical compre¬
hension of plastic form which the Negro shows he has also an
exquisite taste in the handling of his material.” The most
authoritative contemporary Continental criticism quite thor¬
oughly agrees with this verdict and estimate.

Indeed there are many attested influences of African art in
French and German modernist art. They are to be found in
work of Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Modigliani and Utrillo
among the French painters, upon Max Pechstein, Elaine Stern,
Franz Marc and others of the German Expressionists, and upon
Modigliani, Archipenko, Epstein, Lipschitz, Lembruch, and
Zadkine and Faggi among sculptors. In Paris, centering around
Paul Guillaume, one of its pioneer exponents, there has grown
up an art coterie profoundly influenced by an aesthetic devel¬
oped largely from the idioms of African art. And what has
been true of the African sculptures has been in a lesser degree
true of the influence of other African art forms — decorative
design, musical rhythms, dance forms, verbal imagery and
symbolism. Attracted by the appeal of African plastic art to
the study of other modes of African expression, poets like
Guillaume Appolinaire and Blaise Cendrars have attempted
artistic re-expression of African idioms in poetic symbols and
verse forms. So that what is a recognized school of modern
French poetry professes the inspiration of African sources, —
Appolinaire, Reverdy, Salmon, Fargue and others. The bible
of this coterie has been Cendrars’ Anthologie Negrey now in
its sixth edition.

The starting point of an aesthetic interest in African musical
idiom seems to have been H. A. Junod’s work, — Les Chants et
les Contes des Barongas (1897)* From the double source of
African folk song and the study of American Negro musical
rhythms, many of the leading French modernists have derived
inspiration. Berard, Satie, Poulenc, Auric, and even Honneger,
are all in diverse ways and degrees affected, but the most
explicit influence has been upon the work of Darius Milhaud,
who is an avowed propagandist of the possibilities of Negro
musical idiom. The importance of these absorptions of African

262

THE ^EW CNiEGRO

and Negro material by all of the major forms of contemporary
art, some of them independently of any transfer that might
be dismissed as a mere contagion of fad or vogue, is striking,
and ought to be considered as a quite unanimous verdict of the
modern creative mind upon the values, actual and potential,
of this yet unexhausted reservoir of art material.

• • • • •

There is a vital connection between this new artistic respect
for African idiom and the natural ambition of Negro artists
for a racial idiom in their art expression. To a certain extent
contemporary art has pronounced in advance upon this objective
of the younger Negro artists, musicians and writers. Only the
most reactionary conventions of art, then, stand between the
Negro artist and the frank experimental development of these
fresh idioms. This movement would, we think, be well under
way in more avenues of advance at present but for the timid
conventionalism which racial disparagement has forced upon
the Negro mind in America. Let us take as a comparative in¬
stance, the painting of the Negro subject and notice the retard¬
ing effect of social prejudice. The Negro is a far more familiar
figure in American life than in European, but American art,
barring caricature and genre , reflects him scarcely at all. An
occasional type sketch of Henri, or local color sketch of Wins¬
low Homer represents all of a generation of painters. Where¬
as in Europe, with the Negro subject rarely accessible, we have
as far back as the French romanticists a strong interest in the
theme, an interest that in contemporary French, Belgian, Ger¬
man and even English painting has brought forth work of
singular novelty and beauty. This work is almost all above
the plane of genre , and in many cases represents sustained and
lifelong study of the painting of the particularly difficult
values of the Negro subject. To mention but a few, there is
the work of Julius Hiither, Max Slevogt, Max Pechstein,
Elaine Stern, von Reuckterschell among German painters ; of
Dinet, Lucie Cousturier, Bonnard, Georges Rouault, among
the French j Klees van Dongen, the Dutch painter ; most nota¬
bly among the Belgians, Auguste Mambour j and among Eng*-
lish painters, Neville Lewis, F, C. Gadell, John A. Wells, and

CONGO PORTRAIT STATUE

264 THE V(EW V^EGRO

Frank Potter. All these artists have looked upon the African
scene and the African countenance, and discovered there a
beauty that calls for a distinctive idiom both of color and
modelling. The Negro physiognomy must be freshly and
objectively conceived on its own patterns if it is ever to be
seriously and importantly interpreted. Art must discover and
reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid.
And all vital art discovers beauty and opens our eyes to that
which previously we could not see. While American art, in¬
cluding the work of our own Negro artists, has produced noth¬
ing above the level of the genre study or more penetrating
than a Nordicized transcription, European art has gone on ex¬
perimenting until the technique of the Negro subject has
reached the dignity and skill of virtuoso treatment and a dis¬
tinctive style. No great art will impose alien canons upon its
subject matter. The work of Mambour especially suggests this
forceful new stylization; he has brought to the Negro subject
a modeling of masses that is truly sculptural and particularly
suited to the broad massive features and subtle value shadings
of the Negro countenance. After seeing his masterful han¬
dling of mass and light and shade in bold solid planes, one has
quite the conviction that mere line and contour treatment can
never be the classical technique for the portrayal of Negro
types.

The work of these European artists should even now be
the inspiration and guide-posts of a younger school of Ameri¬
can Negro artists. They have too long been the victims of the
academy tradition and shared the conventional blindness of
the Caucasian eye with respect to the racial material at their
immediate disposal. Thus there have been notably successful
Negro artists, but no development of a school of Negro art.
Our Negro American painter of outstanding success is Henry
O. Tanner. His career is a case in point. Though a professed
painter of types, he has devoted his art talent mainly to the
portrayal of Jewish Biblical types and subjects, and has never
maturely touched the portrayal of the Negro subject. War¬
rantable enough — for to the individual talent in art one must
never dictate — who can be certain what field the next Negro

266

THE ViEW ^CEGRO

artist of note will choose to command, or whether he will not
be a landscapist or a master of still life or of purely decorative
painting? But from the point of view of our artistic talent in
bulk — it is a different matter. We ought and must have a
school of Negro art, a local and a racially representative tradi¬
tion. And that we have not, explains why the generation of
Negro artists succeeding Mr. Tanner had only the inspiration
of his great success to fire their ambitions, but not the guidance
of a distinctive tradition to focus and direct their talents. Con¬
sequently they fumbled and fell short of his international stride
and reach. The work of W. E. Scott, E. A. Harleston, W.
Braxton, W. Farrow and Laura Wheeler in painting, and of
Meta Warrick Fuller and May Howard Jackson in sculpture,
competent as it has been, has nevertheless felt this handicap
and has wavered between abstract expression which was imi¬
tative and not highly original, and racial expression which was
only experimental. Lacking group leadership and concentra¬
tion, they were wandering amateurs in the very field that
might have given them concerted mastery.

A younger group of Negro artists is beginning to move in
the direction of a racial school of art. The strengthened tend¬
ency toward representative group expression is shared even
by the later work of the artists previously mentioned, as in
Meta Warrick Fuller’s “Ethiopia Awakening,” to mention an
outstanding example. But the work of young artists like
Archibald Motley, Otto Farrill, Albert Smith, John Urquhart,
Samuel Blount, and especially that of Charles Keene and
Aaron Douglas shows the promising beginning of an art move¬
ment instead of just the cropping out of isolated talent. The
work of Winold Reiss, fellow-countryman of Slevogt and von
Reuckterschell, which has supplied the main illustrative mate¬
rial for this volume has been deliberately conceived and exe¬
cuted as a path-breaking guide and encouragement to this new
foray of the younger Negro artists. In idiom, technical treat¬
ment and objective social angle, it is a bold iconoclastic break
with the current traditions that have grown up about the Negro
subject in American art. It is not meant to dictate a style to
the young Negro artist, but to point the lesson that contempo-

THE A CEGRO DIGS UP HIS PAST 267

rary European art has already learned — that any vital artistic
expression of the Negro theme and subject in art must break
through the stereotypes to a new style, a distinctive fresh tech¬
nique, and some sort of characteristic idiom.

While we are speaking of the resources of racial art, it is well
to take into account that the richest vein of it is not that of por-
traitistic idiom after all, but its almost limitless wealth of
decorative and purely symbolic material. It is for the develop¬
ment of this latter aspect of a racial art that the study and ex¬
ample of African art material is so important. The African
spirit, as we said at the outset, is at its best in abstract decorative
forms. Design, and to a lesser degree, color, are its original
fortes. It is this aspect of the folk tradition, this slumbering gift
of the folk temperament that most needs reachievement and re¬
expression. And if African art is capable of producing the
ferment in modern art that it has, surely this is not too much
to expect of its influence upon the culturally awakened Negro
artist of the present generation. So that if even the present
vogue of African art should pass, and the bronzes of Benin
and the fine sculptures of Gabon and Baoule, and the superb
designs of the Bushongo should again become mere items of
exotic curiosity, for the Negro artist they ought still to have
the import and influence of classics in whatever art expression
is consciously and representatively racial.

Part II

THE NEVE NEGRO IN A
NEIE IEORLD

THE NEGRO PIONEERS

Paul U. Kellogg

In Vandemark’s Folly and other of his novels, Herbert
Quick interpreted the settlement of the Mississippi basin. He
gave us its valor and epic qualities. But in that series of re¬
markable biographical sketches which were cut short by his
death, he lamented the cultural wastage of American pioneer¬
ing. He laid a wreath on the unknown graves of the artists,
poets, singers, the talented of youth, who were submerged in
the westward trek of peoples on the new continent as, in the
course of two hundred and fifty years, they hewed their way
through the forests and at last came out on the open prairie.
In the northward movement of the Negroes in the last ten
years, we have another folk migration which in human sig¬
nificance can be compared only with this pushing back of the
Western frontier in the first half of the last century or with
the waves of immigration which have swept in from overseas
in the last half. Indeed, though numerically far smaller than
either of these, this folk movement is unique. For this time
we have a people singing as they come — breaking through to
cultural expression and economic freedom together.

In our generation the children and grandchildren of the
settlers of the Middle West have uprooted themselves as their
sires did, but to-day their faces are turned cityward. In this
new urban shift, the Negro is sharing, but so swiftly and with
such a peculiar quickening as he pours for the first time into
this new terrain of American economic and community life,
that for him it is more than a migration, it is a rebirth. The
full significance of this belated sharing in the American tradi-

a72 THE 2iEW 2(EGR0

tion of pioneering by black folk from the South should not
escape us; nor the rare fortune that they bring with them cul¬
tural talents long buried and only half revealed in the cotton
lands from which they come.

In a way, two great modes of impulse have been at work
in the settlement of the United States, other than the material
one of bettering one’s lot.

In no small part, ours has been the history of the under-dog
— of common people rising against kings and overlords, of
Pilgrims and Puritans and Catholics working loose from re¬
ligious intolerance, of rebels seeking a new freedom, of adven¬
turers breaking away from the fixity of things. This tradition
we share with England and Western Europe j the impulse
became a dominant force in New England and was at flood
throughout the tidewater colonies when in the Revolution they
threw off the Georges. We may trace its re-emergence in a
new form even in the part which the South took in the Civil
War. This may be put in terms of its idealists, as resistance
to imposed authority by men who sought the governance of
their own lives, however much they might deny it to their
slaves.

We have another tradition — or, at least, another mode of
the same impulse. Not alone rebellion against what has been,
but opportunity for what may be, shaped its course. Set off
by three thousand miles of sea, settled on a continent which
had been kept in reserve ten thousand years, the spirit of our
people has been molded by the frontiers we cleared. It drew
and grew from the open spaces, from wildernesses giving way
to settlements, from the building processes of countryside and
commonwealth and nation. Its like is not known in the older
countries of the world, still in the process of shaking loose
from old tyrannies. We may abuse this heritage, but it is
ours, a broader and more dynamic, more creative conception of
liberty. Spiritually we are rebels. But we are also pioneers.

The Civil War may be interpreted in its final outcome, as
the clash between these two great streams of impulse in Ameri¬
can life and the triumph of this newer native embodiment of
the thing that has stirred and molded the American soul.

THE JiEW C\ CEGRO IN J[ J^EW WORLD 273

For, while the record of Western settlement in our dealings
with the Indians is a chapter not without black pages which
may be compared with our slave trade, nonetheless it was the
free play of free men on free Jand that built up the Middle
West j and it was the rapidly mounting weight of men and
means of that hinterland, flung into the conflict by common
faith in an order which meant opportunity for all, which tipped
the scales as between North and South, preserved the Union
and freed the slaves. Lincoln was its man; not its leader
merely, but framed of the bone and marrow of its plain people;
his spirit, the embodiment of frontiersmen and settlers.

And what has this to do with the northward migration of
the Negro — or its counterpart, his partnership in agricultural
reconstruction in the South? It has more to do than that
children and grandchildren of the emancipated slaves enter
the gates of the cities with the children and grandchildren of
the old frontier. Or even that in this new generation they
are fellow adventurers as never before in the inveterate quest
of our people for new horizons — on the land and in industry.
These things are in themselves of tremendous import. But
my point is, that in the pioneering of this new epoch, they are
getting into stride with that of the old. By way of the typical
American experience, they become for the first time a part of
its living tradition.

The great folkway which is America need no longer be a
thing abstract, apart from them. The Negro boy, who with
his satchel steps off the train in Pittsburgh or Chicago, Detroit
or New York, to make his way in what Robert Woods called
the city wilderness, may draw at the same springs of inspira¬
tion as the boy next him from Wisconsin or Kansas, or that
other who, still westward bent, throws in his lot in the valley
of some irrigation project in the mountain states. The same
can be said of the Corn Club boys and girls of Georgia or
South Carolina, who are building up farm homes with new
tools and husbandry in regions which have been held in the
mesh of a worn out economy. The Hampton and Tuskegee
graduates, the farm demonstrators and co-operators who break
that mesh, its tough warp of the one crop and its binding woof

274 THE O^EW & CEGRO

of the credit system, and help weave in its stead the texture
of a new and more self-reliant rural life, are settlers in a very
real sense. And so are the men and women who, in a great
city district like Harlem, against the pressure of overcrowding
and high rents, against the drag of black exploiters and white,
and the hazards of sickness and precariousness of livelihood,
odds which all of us face in our great city machines, and which
bear down with redoubled force upon youth and childhood —
these men and these women, who strand by strand fashion the
fabric of the good life in a city neighborhood, are of the breed
of the old pioneers. They are builders.

Do not mistake me, the land they come to is not all milk
and honey. Nor was the way of the frontiersman, or the fron¬
tier woman, or the frontier child. Nor were these all cast in
heroic or congenial, or even tolerable, molds. But the new
order in the Southern countryside, the new order in the North¬
ern city, offers an economic foothold, as did the old clearing.
It calls on the spirit of team play, as did the old settlement
with its road building and its barn raisings. There is a smack
of opportunity and freedom in the air. The very process as
bound up in those changes in individual fortune, is instinct
with that group consciousness of common adventure, is fresh
with the tang of growth and expansion, which the wagon trains
carried with them to the West, and which became the theme
of our pioneering.

The vocational schools for Negroes in the South have en¬
couraged, among other things, the vigorous spirit of individual
initiative which we like to associate with American character.
The recoil among Negroes against political suppression and ter¬
rorism which has animated much of their leadership of protest
in the last thirty years has been kin to our old rebel tradition.
But here in this new pioneering, we have the nascent begin¬
nings of that other great mode of social impulse. And we
catch its gleam in a newer, more positive and creative leader¬
ship of self-expression.

Those of us who trace our blazed ways to the Atlantic Sea¬
board, to Pilgrim Rock or James River blockhouse or Dutch
trading post, can perhaps not realize what it means to a people

BHB

THE NEW NEGRO IN <A NEW WORLD 2js

to have their vista of the past shut in by whitewashed wall,
mud chimney and whipping ring of a slave street. No wonder
in his new racial consciousness, the Negro digs up his past and
searches out in Africa the genesis of a proud tradition. My
thought is that the new opportunities he is broaching in Ameri¬
can life and labor throw open another vista of the past, one of
the New World, to which he is not alien. This background
may not be his to-day, I grant ; but by some compensating law
of relativity, it will come to meet him as he presses forward.

Seldom in the history of the world have a people moved
North. Our history is of Westward expansion. So coursed
the great racial waves that swept into Europe from the East.
We have had. the experiment of peoples moving Southward —
Northmen and Frank and the rest, flowering out in a new and
milder climate. Here we are witnessing a reversal of that
process. What its outcome will be cannot be forecast. But it
is something which, points of compass aside, is kin to the whole
trend of American experience. It is search for the new and
democratic chance. It is pioneering.

It is, also, an adventure in self-expression — not alone in
political and economic terms, but in things of the word and
spirit. We have witnessed in the United States the duress in
which various immigrant groups have been held until their
cause was taken up by rare people, as Jane Addams and Jacob
Riis, endowed not alone with understanding, but with the art
of interpretation. The Negro has had no language barrier j
but he has been hemmed in by barbed wire entanglements of
prejudice and fixed conceptions. He is learning ways of his
own to surmount them. He employs winged gifts that shoot
across them. He brings song, music, dance, poetry, story-tell¬
ing ; rhythms and color and drama, ardent feeling and fleet
thought. Not alone is his a Northward migration within the
confines of America, challenging new communities with his
presence. Not alone is it a shift from soil to city. Not alone
a breaking-away from the old inhibitions of a fixed and often
adverse social environment. He is readdressing himself to
America on a cultural plane ; and in arenas where the old in¬
hibitions do not hold. A verse that pierces the heart meets

2j6

THE CNiEW y(EGRO

no race barriers. A song that lifts the spirit with its lilt wings
free in the democracy of art.

It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the
Negro’s employment of these cultural gifts. A new genera¬
tion of both races respond to them. They afford white America
a new approach to what we have overlong dourly called the
Race Problem. They make for swifter understanding than a
multitude of heavy treatises. I speak from experience with
our special number of the Survey Graphic [Harlem: Mecca
of the New Negro: March, 1925] which Dr. Locke edited
and which was the forerunner of this book. Harlem presents
to the eye the look of any tenement and apartment district of
New York so far as its physical make-up is concerned. Occa¬
sionally some writer dipped beneath the surface: Negro authors
and periodicals had borne witness to it ; yet so far as the news¬
papers were concerned, it had not registered, except as an area
of real estate speculation and clashes, and the police news and
racial friction of a city quarter. Kipling gave us the High
Road to India in Kim. Sinclair Lewis set down America in
Main Street. But that contrast is not the whole story of East
and West; here was something as alluring as it was porten¬
tous happening in our midst; but unobserved and swathed
in the commonplace. How to unfold it? Our number was
cut from city cloth, it brought out the seams of social problems
which underlie it, but also, and in all its sheen, the cultural
pattern that gave it texture. It proved a magic carpet which
swung the reader not across the minarets and bazaars of some
ancient Arabia, but the wells and shrines of a people’s renais¬
sance. The pageant of it swept past in pastel and story, poem
and epic prose, and the response was instant. In this volume,
what was then done fragmentarily is now done in a way which
will endure.

For the Negro to thus make himself, and his, articulate to
those about him will count for much ; but it is the lesser good
of two. He is finding himself anew in his own eyes. His
self-expression is giving body to his special racial genius; he
gains a new sense of its integrity and distinction. I recall a
discussion at the Harlem Forum of the work of Wlnold Reiss

7 ’HE O^EW O^EGRO IN *A O^EW WORLD 277

which enriches this volume. There were Negroes who pro¬
tested against his series of racial types; they clung to the pre¬
vailing ideals of beauty and these heads were not beautiful to
them. As others were quick to point out, from the picture
books they were brought up on as children to the newspaper
supplements that reached their homes the Sunday before, they
had been encompassed by Nordic conventions. Their imagery
had been so long thwarted and warped that they could not
grasp the rare service rendered by this Bavarian artist, who
came with fresh eyes, who is the first in America to break with
sentimentality and caricature and delineate racial types with
fidelity, and who is encouraging a group of young Negroes to
follow through to mastery the path he has broken.

Mr. Reiss’s pastels were shown that month in the Harlem
Public Library, and at the instigation of Mrs. McDougald, hun¬
dreds of Negro school children passed before them. There
they saw plain people depicted, such as they knew on the street,
and, also, poets, philosophers, teachers and leaders, who are
the spearheads of a racial revival; forerunners, whose work
might be passed on to them, men and women treated with a
dignity and beauty and potency altogether new. Images they
could carry with them through their lives. Their pioneers!

But, though this latest experience of the American Negro
is properly a promisefully racial revival, more fundamentally
even it is an induction into the heritage of the national tradition,
a baptism of the American spirit that slavery cheated him out
of, a maturing experience that Reconstruction delayed. Now
that materially and spiritually the Negro pioneers, and by his
own initiative, shares the common experience of all the others
of America’s composite stock, his venturing Americanism stakes
indisputable claims in the benefits and resources of our
democracy.

THE NEW FRONTAGE ON AMERICAN

LIFE r I

\ i

Charles S. Johnson

The cities of the North, stern, impersonal and enchanting,
needed men of the brawny muscles, which Europe, suddenly
flaming with war, had ceased to supply, when the black hordes
came on from the South like a silent, encroaching shadow. Five
hundred thousand there were in the first three-year period.
These had yielded with an almost uncanny unanimity of tri¬
umphant approval to this urge to migration, closing in first
upon the little towns of the South, then upon the cities near
the towns, and, with an unfailing consistency, sooner or later,
they boarded a Special bound North, to close in upon these
cities which lured them, with an ultimate appeal, to their gay
lights and high wages, unoppressive anonymity, crowds, excite¬
ment, and feverish struggle for life.

There was Chicago in the West, known far and wide for
its colossal abattoirs, whose placarded warehouses, set close by
the railroad, dotted every sizable town of the South, calling
for men; Chicago, remembered for the fairyland wonders of
the World’s Fair; home of the fearless, taunting “race paper,”
and above all things, of mills clamoring for men.

And there was Pittsburgh, gloomy, cheerless — bereft of the
Poles and Lithuanians, Croatians and Austrians, who had
trucked and smelted its steel. And along with Pittsburgh, the
brilliant satellite towns of Bethlehem and Duquesne and
Homestead. The solid but alert Europeans in 1916 had de¬
serted the lower bases of industry and gone after munitions
money, or home to fight. Creeping out, they left a void, which,
to fill, tempted industry to desperate measures. One railroad
line brought in 1 2,000 of these new laborers graciously and
gratuitously. The road-beds and immense construction pro-

278

WlNOLO

Piej/r

Charles S. Johnson

THE NEW NEGRO IN Jt NEW WORLD 279

jects of the State were in straits and the great mills wanted
men.

And there was New York City with its polite personal serv¬
ice and its Harlem — the Mecca of the Negroes the country
over. Delightful Harlem of the effete East! Old families,
brownstone mansions, a step from worshipful Broadway, the
end of the rainbow for early relatives drifting from home into
the exciting world; the factories and the docks, the stupendous
clothing industries, and buildings to be “superintended,” a
land of opportunity for musicians, actors and those who wanted
to be, the national headquarters of everything but the gov¬
ernment.

And there, was Cleveland with a faint Southern expose but
with iron mills; and St. Louis, one of the first cities of the
North, a city of mixed traditions but with great foundries,
brick and terra-cotta works; Detroit, the automobile center,
with its sophistication of skill and fancy wages reflecting the
daring economic policies of Henry Ford; Hartford, Connecti¬
cut, where, indeed, the first experiment with southern labor,
was tried on the tobacco plantations skirting the city; Akron
and its rubber; Philadelphia, with its comfortable old tradi¬
tions; and the innumerable little industrial towns where
fabulous wages were paid.

White and black these cities lured, but the blacks they lured
with a demoniac appeal.

Migrations, thinks Professor Carr-Saunders — and he is con¬
firmed by history — are nearly always due to the influence of an
idea. Population crowding, and economic debasement, are, by
their nature, more or less constant. In the case of the Negroes,
it was not exclusively an idea, but an idea brought within the
pale of possibility. By tradition and probably by tempera¬
ment the Negro is a rural type. His metier is agriculture.
To this economy his mental and social habits have been ad¬
justed. In exact contrast to him is the Jew, who by every
aptitude and economic attachment is a city dweller, and in

280

THE V(EW CNiEGRO

whom modern students of racial behavior are discovering a
neurotic constitution traceable to the emotional strain of pe¬
culiar racial status and to the terrific pressure of city life.

South, there are few cities. The life of the section is not
manufacture but the soil — and more than anything else, the
fluffy white bolls of cotton. There is Mississippi where 56 per
cent of the population are Negroes and 88 per cent of the
Negroes are farmers. Cotton is King. When it lives and
grows and escapes the destroying weevil and the droughts and
the floods, there is comfort for the owners. When it fails, as
is most often, want stalks, and a hobbed heel twists on the
neck of the black tenant. The iniquitous credit system breed¬
ing dishonesty and holding the Negroes perpetually in debt and
virtually enslaved ; the fierce hatred of poor whites in fright¬
ened and desperate competition ; cruelty of the masters who
reverently thanked God for the inferior blacks who could
labor happily in the sun, with all the unfeeling complaisance
of oxen 3 the barrenness and monotony of rural life; the dawn
of hope for something better; distant flashes of a new coun¬
try, beckoning — -these were the soil in which the idea took root
— and flowered. There was no slow, deliberate sifting of
plans, or measurement of conduct, or inspired leadership, or
forces dark and mysterious. To each in his setting came an
impulse and an opportunity.

There was Jeremiah Taylor, of Bobo, Mississippi, long since
at the age of discretion, gnarled and resigned to his farm, one
of whose sons came down one day from the “yellow dog road”
with the report that folks were leaving “like Judgment day”;
that he had seen a labor man who promised a free ticket to
a railroad camp up North. Jeremiah went to town, half doubt¬
ing and came back aflush and decided. His son left, he fol¬
lowed and in four months his wife and two daughters bundled
their possessions, sold their chickens and joined them.

Into George Horton’s barber shop in Hattiesburg, Mis¬
sissippi, came a white man of the North. Said he: “The
colored folks are obligated to the North because it freed
them. The North is obligated to the colored folks because
after freeing them it separated them from their livelihood.

THE NEW J^EGRO IN JI NEW WORLD 281

Now, this living is offered with interest and a new birth of
liberty. Will the colored man live up to his side of the
bargain?” The clinching argument was free transportation.
George Horton’s grievance was in politics. He already earned
a comfortable living and could decline the free ride as a
needless charity. But his place contributed forty men. The
next year the Hattiesburg settlement in Chicago brought up
their pastor.

And there was Joshua Ward, who had prayed for these times
and now saw God cursing the land and stirring up his people.
He would invoke his wrath no longer.

Rosena Shephard’s neighbor’s daughter, with a savoury
record at home, went away. Silence, for the space of six
weeks. Then she wrote that she was earning $2 a day packing
sausages. “If that lazy, good-for-nothing gal kin make $2
a day, I kin make four,” and Mrs. Shephard left.

Clem Woods could not tolerate any fellow’s getting ahead of
him. He did not want to leave his job and couldn’t explain
why he wanted to go North and his boss proved to him that
his chances were better at home. But every departure added
to his restlessness. One night a train passed through with
two coaches of men from New Orleans. Said one of them:
“Good-by, bo, I’m bound for the promised land,” and Clem
got aboard.

Jefferson Clemons in De Ridder, Louisiana, was one of
“1,800 of the colored race” who paid $2 to a “white gentle¬
man” Jto get to Chicago on the 15th of March. By July he
had saved enough to pay his fare and left “bee cars,” as he
confided, “he was tired of bein’ dog and beast.”

Mrs. Selina Lennox was slow to do anything, but she was
by nature a social creature. The desolation of her street wore
upon her. No more screaming, darting children, no more
bustle of men going to work or coming home. The familiar
shuffle and loud greetings of shopping matrons, the scent of
boiled food — all these were gone. Mobile Street, the noisy,
was clothed in an ominous quiet, as if some disaster impended.
Now and then the Italian storekeeper, bewildered and forlorn,
would walk to the middle of the street and look first up and

282 THE CNiE W T(_E G R O

then down and walk back into his store again. Mrs. Lennox
left.

George Scott wanted more “free liberty” and accepted a
proffered railroad ticket from a stranger who always talked
in whispers and seemed to have plenty of money.

Dr. Alexander H. Booth’s practice declined, but some of
his departed patients, long in his debt paid up with an in¬
furiating air of superiority, adding in their letters such taunts
as “home ain’t nothing like this” or “nobody what has any
grit in his craw would stay,” and the Doctor left.

John Felts of Macon was making $1.25 when flour went
up to $12 a barrel and the New York Age was advertising-
cheap jobs at $2.50 a day. He had a wife and six children.

Jim Casson in Grabor, Louisiana, had paid his poll taxes, his
state and parish taxes and yet children could not get a school.

Miss Jamesie Towns taught fifty children four months for
the colored tenants, out near Fort Valley, Georgia. Her
salary was reduced from $16.80 to $14.40 a month.

Enoch Scott was living in Hollywood, Mississippi, when the
white physician and one of the Negro leaders disputed a small
account. The Negro was shot three times in the back and his
head battered — all this in front of the high sheriff’s office.
Enoch says he left because the doctor might sometime take a
dislike to him.

When cotton was selling for forty cents a point, Joshua John¬
son was offered twenty and was dared to try to sell it any¬
where else. Said Joshua: “Next year, I won’t have no such
trouble,” and he didn’t.

Chicago’s Negro population had dragged along by decades
until the upheaval, when suddenly it leaped from 44,000 to
109,000. In a slice of the city between nineteen blocks, 92,000
of them crowded: on the east the waters of Lake Michigan; on
the west the great nauseous stretch of the stockyards and
the reeking little unpainted dwellings of foreigners; on the
north the business district, and on the south the scowling and
self-conscious remnant of the whites left behind in the rush
of fashion to the North Shore.

Fifteen years ago over 60 per cent of all these working

THE NEW NEGRO IN It NEW WORLD 283

Negroes were engaged in domestic and personal service. There
was nothing else to do. Then the fashion had changed in ser¬
vants as Irish and Swedish and German tides came on. An
unfortunate experience with the unions lost for Negroes the
best positions in their traditional strongholds as waiters and
poisoned their minds against organized labor. Racial ex¬
clusiveness, tradition and inexperience, kept them out of in¬
dustry. Then a strike at the stockyards and the employers
miraculously and suddenly discovered their untried genius,
while the unions elected to regard them as deliberate mis¬
creants lowering wage standards by design and taking white
men’s jobs. Smoldering resentment. But with the war and
its labor shortage, they came on in torrents. They overran
the confines of the old area and spread south in spite of the
organized opposition of Hyde Park and Kenwood, where ob¬
jection was registered with sixty bombs in a period of two
years. Passions flamed and broke in a race riot unprecedented
for its list of murders and counter-murders, its mutilations and
rampant savagery; for the bold resistance of the Negroes to
violence. Then gradually passions fired by the first encounter
subsided into calm and the industries absorbed 80 per cent of
the working members.

Before the deluge, New York City, too, lacked that lusty
vigor of increase, apart from migration, which characterized
the Negro population as a whole. In sixty years, its increase
had been negligible. Time was when that small cluster of de¬
scendants of the benevolent old Dutch masters and of the
free Negroes moved with freedom and complacent importance
about the intimate fringe of the city’s active life. These
Negroes were the barbers, caterers, bakers, restaurateurs,
coachmen — all highly elaborated personal service positions.
The crafts had permitted them wide freedom; they were
skilled artisans. They owned businesses which were inde¬
pendent of Negro patronage. But that was long ago. This
group in 1917 was rapidly passing, its splendor shorn. The
rapid evolution of business, blind to the amenities on which
they flourished, had devoured their establishments, unsup¬
ported and weak in capital resources; the incoming hordes of

284 THE V(EW 0\ CEGRO

Europeans had edged them out of their inheritance of personal
service businesses, clashed with them in competition for the
rough muscle jobs and driven them back into the obscurity of
individual personal service.

For forty years, moreover, there have been dribbling in
from the South, the West Indies and South America, small
increments of population which through imperceptible grada¬
tions had changed the whole complexion and outlook of the
Negro New Yorker. New blood and diverse cultures these
brought — and each a separate problem of assimilation. As
the years passed, the old migrants “rubbed off the green,”
adopted the slant and sophistication of the city, mingled and
married, and their children are now the native-born New
Yorkers. For fifty years scattered families have been uniting
in the hectic metropolis from every state in the union and every
province of the West Indies. There have always been un¬
digested colonies — the Sons and Daughters of North Carolina,
the Virginia Society, the Southern Beneficial League — these are
survivals of self-conscious, intimate bodies. But the mass is
in the melting pot of the city.

There were in New York City in 1920, by the census count,
1 52,467 Negroes. Of these 39,233 are reported as born in New
York State, 30,436 in foreign countries, principally the West
Indies, and 78,242 in other states, principally the South. Since
1920 about 50,000 more Southerners have been added to the
population, bulging the narrow strip of Harlem in which it
had lived and spilling over the old boundaries. There are no
less than 25,000 Virginians in New York City, more than
20,000 North and South Carolinians, and 1 0,000 Georgians.
Every Southern state has contributed its quota to a hetero¬
geneity which matches that of cosmopolitan New York. If
the present Negro New Yorker were analyzed, he would be
found to be composed of one part native, one part West Indian
and about three parts Southern. If the tests of the army psy¬
chologists could work with the precision and certainty with
which they are accredited, the Negroes who make up the
present population of New York City would be declared to
represent different races, for the differences between South

THE V(EW y^EGRO IN O^EW WORLD 285

and North by actual measurement are greater than the dif¬
ference between whites and Negroes.

A new type of Negro is evolving — a city Negro. He is
being evolved out of those strangely divergent elements of the
general background. And this is a fact overlooked by those
students of human behavior, who with such quick comprehen¬
sion detect the influence of the city in the nervousness of the
Jew, the growing nervous disorders of city dwellers in general
to the tension of city life. In ten years, Negroes have been
actually transplanted from one culture to another.

Where once there were personal and intimate relations, in
which individuals were in contact at practically all points of
their lives, there are now group relations in which the whole
structure is broken up and reassorted, casting them in contact
at only one or two points of their lives. The old controls are
no longer expected to operate. Whether apparent or not, the
newcomers are forced to reorganize their lives, to enter a new
status and adjust to it that eager restlessness which prompted
them to leave home. Church, lodge, gossip, respect of friends,
established customs, social and racial, exercise controls in the
small Southern community. The church is the center for
face-to-face relations. The pastor is the leader. The role
of the pastor and the social utility of the church are obvious in
this letter sent home:

“Dear pastor : I find it my duty to write you my where¬
abouts, also family ... I shall send my church money in
a few days. I am trying to influence our members here
to do the same. I received notice printed in a R.R. car
(Get right with God). O, I had nothing so striking as
the above mottoe. Let me no how is our church I am so
anxious to no. My wife always talking about her seat in
the church want to no who occupies it. Yours in Christ.”

Religion affords an outlet for the emotional energies
thwarted in other directions. The psychologists will find rich

286 fHE-’&tEW V(EGRO

material for speculation on the emotional nature of some of
the Negroes set into the New York pattern in this confession:

“I got here in time to attend one of the greatest re¬
vivals in the history of my life — over 500 people join the
church. We had a Holy Ghost shower. You know I :

like to have run wild.”

In the new environment there are many and varied substi¬
tutes which answer more or less directly the myriad desires in¬
discriminately comprehended by the church. The complaint of
the ministers that these “emancipated” souls “stray away from
God” when they reach the city is perhaps warranted on the
basis of the fixed status of the church in the South, but it
is not an accurate interpretation of what has happened. When
the old ties are broken new satisfactions are sought. Some¬
times the Young Men’s Christian Association functions. This
has in some cities made rivalry between the churches and the
Associations. More often the demands of the young exceed the
“sterilized” amusements of Christian organizations. It is not
uncommon to find groups who faithfully attend church Sun¬
day evenings and as faithfully seek further stimulation in a
cabaret afterwards. Many have been helped to find them¬
selves, no doubt, by having their old churches and pastors
reappear in the new home and resume control. But too often,
as with European immigrants, the family loses control over
the children who become assimilated more rapidly than their
parents. Tragic evidences of this appear coldly detailed in the
records of delinquency.

Social customs must change slowly if excesses and waste
would be avoided. Growth of a new custom on a town will
be slow; introduction of a foreigner to a new custom in its
maturity necessitates rapid accommodation. It cannot be fully
comprehended at first sight. The innumerable safeguards
which surround these departures from social customs are lack¬
ing. There is a different social meaning in Ophelia, Missis¬
sippi, when one does not go to church, or a woman smokes or
bobs her hair; Palatka’s star elocutionist does not always take

THE NEW C^EGRO IN H J^EW WORLD 287

Chicago’s dramatic circles by storm; neither does Noah Brown,
the local potentate of fraternal circles wield the same influence
in New York. There are new leaders and new objectives,
which for many moons remain incomprehensible to the new¬
comer.

There is a reorganization of attitudes. There is a racial as
well as a social disorientation. For those who fed their hopes
and expectations on a new status which would afford an escape
from unrighteous and oppressive limitations of the South,
there is a sensitiveness about any reminder of the station from
which they have been so recently emancipated — a hair-trigger
resentment, a furious revolt against the years of training in
the precise boundaries of their place, a fear of disclosing the
weakness of submission where it is not expected, an expansive¬
ness and pretense at ease in unaccustomed situations. Exact
balance is difficult. Here are some of the things that register:
John Diggs writes home to his friend this letter:

“Dear Partner: ... I am all fixed now and living
well, I don’t have to work hard. Don’t have to mister
every little boy comes along. I haven’t heard a white
man call a colored a nigger you know how — since I been
here. I can ride in the street or steam car anywhere I
get a seat. I don’t care to mix with white what I mean
I am not crazy about being with white folks, but if I
have to pay the same fare I have learn to want the same
acomidation and if you are first in a place here shoping
you don’t have to wait till all the white folks get thro
tradeing yet amid all this I love the good old south and
am praying that God may give every well wisher a chance
to be a man regardless of color . . .”

If the Negroes in Harlem show at times less courtesy toward
white visitors than is required by the canons of good taste, this
is bad, but understandable. It was remarked shortly after the
first migration that the newcomers on boarding street cars in¬
variably strode to the front even if there were seats in the
rear. This is, perhaps, a mild example of tendencies expressed

288

THE 3^EW ^CEGRO

more strikingly in other directions, for with but few excep¬
tions they are forced to sit in the rear of street cars throughout
the South.

The difference between the background of northern and
southern Negroes is even wider than it seems. In the two there
are utterly different packets of stored up memories marking
out channels of conduct. The southern Negro directs his am¬
bitions at those amenities of which the northern Negro boasts
and, until the first wonderment and envy subside, ignores his
reservations. This is the hectic period of transition, so notice¬
able after huge accessions — inevitably in the wake of the new¬
comers north, whether the numbers are large or small. There
comes the testing of long cherished desires, the thirst for for¬
bidden fruit — and disillusionment, partial or complete, almost
as inevitably.

Cities have personalities. Their chief industries are likely to
determine not only their respective characters, but the type of
persons they attract and hold. Detroit manufactures automo¬
biles, Chicago slaughters cattle, Pittsburgh smelts iron and
steel — these three communities draw different types of work¬
ers whose industrial habits are interlaced with correspondingly
different cultural backgrounds. One might look to this fac¬
tor as having significance in the selection of Negro workers
and indeed in the relations of the Negro population with the
community. The technical intricacy of the automobile in¬
dustry, like the army intelligence tests, sifts out the heavy-
handed worker who fits admirably into the economy of the
steel industries, where 80 per cent of the operations are un¬
skilled. A temperamental equipment easily adapted to the
knife-play and stench of killing and preserving cattle is not
readily interchangeable either with the elaborated technique
of the factory or the sheer muscle play and endurance re¬
quired by the mill. These communities draw different types

of workers.

Similar differences between cities account for the curiously
varied directions of growth which the Negro populations take.

THE NEW NEGRO IN *A New WORLD 289

They help to explain the furious striving after commercial
glory in Chicago, and the chasing of the will-o’-the-wisp of
culture in New York; the objective of an unshakable berth
in a skilled job at $10 a day in Detroit, and a near future
of benign comfort in Philadelphia. The Negro workers can
no more become a fixed racial concept than can white workers.
Conceived in terms either of capacity or opportunity, their em¬
ployment gives rise to the most perplexing paradoxes. If it is
a question of what Negroes are mentally or physically able to
do, there are as many affirmations of competence as denials
of it.

In skilled work requiring membership in unions they are
employed only in small numbers, and membership is rarely
encouraged unless the union is threatened. Since the ap¬
prentice-recruits for these jobs are discouraged, and the num¬
bers sparse, the safety of the union is rarely threatened by an
unorganized Negro minority. In certain responsible skilled
positions, such as locomotive engineers, street cars and subway
motormen, Negroes are never employed.

The distinctions are irrational. A Negro worker may not be
a street or subway conductor because of the possibility of public
objection to contact — but he may be a ticket chopper. He
may not be a money changer in a subway station because honesty
is required — yet he may be entrusted, as a messenger, with
thousands of dollars daily. He may not sell goods over a
counter — but he may deliver the goods after they have been
sold. He may be a porter in charge of a sleeping car without
a conductor, but never a conductor ; he may be a policeman but
not a fireman; a linotyper, but not a motion picture operator;
a glass annealer, but not a glass blower, a deck hand, but not
a sailor. The list could be continued indefinitely.

Between the principal northern cities there is a simple but
vital difference to be observed. While New York City, for
example, offers a diversity of employment, the city has not
such basic industries as may be found in the automobile plants
of Detroit, or the iron and steel works and gigantic meat
slaughtering industries of Chicago. In Chicago, there is di¬
versified employment, to be sure, but there is a significantly

290 THE CNiEW ^ EGRO

heavier concentration in the basic industries; more than that,
there are gradations of work from unskilled to skilled. In
certain plants skilled workers increased from 3.5 per cent of
the Negro working population in 1910 to 13*5 Per cent !920
in Chicago. In the slaughtering houses there are actually more
semi-skilled Negro workers than laborers. The number of
iron molders increased from 31 in 1910 to 520 in 19 20 and
this latter number represents 10 per cent of all the iron
molders.

In the working age groups of New York there are more
women than men. For every hundred Negro men there -are
no Negro women. This is abnormal and would be a dis¬
tinct anomaly in an industrial center. The surplus women are
doubtless the residue from the general wash and ebb of mi¬
grants who found a demand for their services. The city
actually attracts more women than men. But surplus women
bring on other problems, as the social agencies will testify.
“Where women preponderate in large numbers there is pro¬
portionate increase in immorality because women are cheap.”
... The situation does not permit normal relations. What is
most likely to happen, and does happen, is that women soon
find it an added personal attraction to contribute to the support
of a man. Demoralization may follow this — and does. More¬
over, the proportion of Negro women at work in Manhattan
(60.6) is twice that of any corresponding group, and one of
the highest proportions registered anywhere.

The nature of the work of at least 40 per cent of the men
suggests a relationship, even if indirectly, with the tensely
active night life by which Harlem is known. The dull, un-
arduous routine of a porter’s job or that of an elevator tender,
does not provide enough stimulation to consume the normal
supply of nervous energy. It is unthinkable that the restless¬
ness which drove migrants to New York from dull small
towns would allow them to be content with the same dullness
in the new environment, when a supply of garish excitements
is so richly available.

With all the “front” of pretending to live, the aspect of
complacent wantlessness, it is clear that the Negroes are in

THE U^EW O^EGRO IN O^EW WORLD 291

a predicament. The moment holds tolerance but no great
promise. Just as the wave of immigration once swept these
Negroes out of old strongholds, a change of circumstances may
disrupt them again. The slow moving black masses, with
their assorted heritages and old loyalties, face the same stern
barriers in the new environment. They are the black workers.

Entering gradually an era of industrial contact and compe¬
tition with white workers of greater experience and numerical
superiority, antagonisms loom up. Emotions have a way
of re-enforcing themselves. The fierce economic fears of
men in competition can supplement or be supplemented by the
sentiments engendered by racial difference. Beneath the dis¬
astrous East St. Louis conflict was a boiling anger toward south¬
ern Negroes coming in to “take white men’s jobs.” The same
antagonisms, first provoked sixty years ago in the draft riots of
New Y ork during the Civil War, flared again in the shameful
battle of “San Juan Hill” in the Columbus Hill District.
These outbreaks were distinctly more economic than racial.

Herein lies one of the points of highest tension in race
relations. Negro workers potentially menace organized labor
and the leaders of the movement recognize this. But racial
sentiments are not easily destroyed by abstract principles. The
white workers have not, except in few instances, conquered
the antagonisms founded on race to the extent of accepting the
rights of Negro workers to the privileges which they enjoy.
While denying them admission to their crafts, they grow furi¬
ous over their dangerous borings from the outside. “The
Negroes are scabs.” “They hold down the living standards of '
workers by cutting under!” “Negroes are professional strike
breakers!” These sentiments are a good nucleus for elabora¬
tion into the most furious fears and hatreds.

It is believed variously that Negro workers are as a matter
of policy opposed to unions or as a matter of ignorance in¬
capable of appreciating them. From some unions they are
definitely barred j some insist on separate Negro locals ; some

292 <THE ViEW 5V [EGRO

limit them to qualified membership ; some accept them freely
with white workers. The situation of the Negroes, on the
surface, is, to say the least, compromising. Their shorter in¬
dustrial experience and almost complete isolation from the
educative influence of organized trade unions contribute to
some of the inertia encountered in organizing them. Their
traditional positions have been those of personal loyalty, and
this has aided the habit of individual bargaining for jobs in
industry. They have been, as was pointed out, under the
comprehensive leadership of the church in practically all as¬
pects of their lives including their labor. No effective new
leadership has developed to supplant this old fealty. The
attitude of white workers has sternly opposed the use of
Negroes as apprentices through fear of subsequent competition
in the skilled trades. This has limited the number of skilled
Negroes trained on the job. But despite this denial, Negroes
have gained skill.

This disposition violently to protest the employment of
Negroes in certain lines because they are not members of the
union and the equally violent protest against the admission
of Negroes to the unions, created in the Negroes, desperate
for work, an attitude of indifference to abstract pleas. In 1910
they were used in New York City to break the teamsters’
strike and six years later they were organized. In 1919 they
were used in a strike of the building trades. Strained feelings
resulted, but they were finally included in the unions of this
trade. During the outlaw strike of the railway and steamship
clerks, freight handlers, expressmen and station employees,
they were used to replace the striking whites and were given
preference over the men whose places they had taken. During
the shopmen’s strike they were promoted into new positions
and thus made themselves eligible for skilled jobs as machinists.
In fact, their most definite gains have been at the hands of
employers and over the tactics of labor union exclusionists.

Where the crafts are freely open to them they have joined
with the general movement of the workers. Of the 5,3 8 6
Negro longshoremen, about 5,000 are organized. Of the 735
Negro carpenters, 400 are members of the United Brotherhood

THE NEW CNiEGRO IN *A NEW WORLD 293

of Carpenters and Joiners. Of the 2,275 semi-skilled clothing
workers practically all are members of the International Ladies
Garment Workers Union. The musicians are 50 per cent or¬
ganized. The difficulty is that the great preponderance of
Negro jobs is still in lines which are not organized. The
porters, laundresses (outside of laundries) and servants have
no organization. The Negroes listed as painters are not in the
painters’ union, many of them being merely whitewashers.
The tailors are in large part cleaners and pressers. The wait¬
ers, elevator tenders (except female) are poorly organized.

The end of the Negro’s troubles, however, does not come
with organization. There is still the question of employers,
for it is a certain fact that preference is frequently given white
workers when they can be secured, if high wages are to be
paid. A vicious circle indeed! One Negro editor has sug¬
gested a United Negro Trades Union built on the plan of
the United Hebrew Trades and the Italian Chamber of
Labor. The unions are lethargic ; the Negroes skeptical, un¬
trained and individualistic. Meanwhile they drift, a disor¬
dered mass, self-conscious, but with their aims unrationalized,
into the face of new problems.

Out of this medley of strains in reaction to totally new
experiences, a strange product is evolving, and with it new
wishes, habits and expectations. Negro workers have discov¬
ered an unsuspected strength even though they are as yet
incapable of integrating it. Black labor, now sensitive and
insistent, will have the protection of workers’ organizations or
by the strength of their menace keep these organizations futile
and ineffective.

With the shift toward industry now beginning, and a subse¬
quent new status already foreshadowed, some sounder economic
policy is imperative. The traditional hold of domestic service
vocations is already broken: witness the sudden halt in the in¬
crease of Negro male servants and elevator men. The enor¬
mous growth of certain New York industries has been out of
proportion to the normal native production of workers. The
immigration on which these formerly depended has been cut
down and the prospects are that this curtailment will continue.

294 THE U^EW C^EGRO

For the first time, as a result of promotion, retirement and
death, gaps are appearing which the limited recruits cannot fill.
Note the clothing industry, one of the largest in New York.
There is a persistent lament that the second generation of im¬
migrants do not continue in the trade. Already Negro work¬
ers have been sought to supplement the deficiencies in the first
generation recruits. This sort of thing will certainly be felt
in other lines. The black masses are on the verge of induction
from their unenviable status as servants into the forces of the
industrial workers, a more arduous, but less dependent rank.
They require a new leadership, training in the principles of
collective action, a new orientation with their white fellow
workers for the sake of a future peace, a reorganization of the
physical and mental habits which are a legacy of their old ex¬
periences, and deliberate training for the new work to come.
It is this rehabilitation of the worker that the Urban Leagues
have tried to accomplish, accompanying this effort with a cam¬
paign against the barriers to the entrance of Negro workers
into industry. Conceiving these workers as inherently capable
of an infinite range of employment, this organization insists
merely upon an openness which permits opportunity, an ob¬
jective experiment uncluttered by old theories of racial in¬
competence and racial dogmas.

The workers of the South and the West Indies who have
come to the cities of the North with vagrant desires and im¬
pulses, their endowments of skill and strength, their repres¬
sions and the telltale marks of backward cultures, with all the
human wastes of the process, have directed shafts of their
native energy into the cities’ life and growth. They are be¬
coming a part of it. The restive spirit which brought them
has been neither all absorbed nor wasted. Over two-thirds of
all the businesses operated by Negroes in New York are con¬
ducted by migrant Negroes. They are in the schools — they are
the radicals and this is hopeful. The city Negro — an unpre¬
dictable mixture of all possible temperaments — is yet in
evolution.

THE UiEW A CEGRO IN *A J^EW WORLD 295

The violent sub-currents of recent years, which have shifted
the economic base of Negro life — as indeed they have affected
all other groups — have brought about a new orientation
throughout, and have accentuated group attitudes among both
black and white, sometimes favorably, sometimes unfavor¬
ably j here in a spurt of progress, there in a backwash of
reaction.

Take the case of Negro business. It is only within recent
years that a coldly practical eye has been turned to the capital
created by that body of black workers 3 to the very obvious
fact that a certain affluence breeds a certain respect 3 that where
the pressure is heaviest, and unjust restrictions imposed, there
is a politely effective boycott possible in “racial solidarity”
which diverts Negro capital from disinterested hands into the
coffers of “race institutions.” Instance the Negro insurance
companies, of which there are now sixty-seven, with over
$250,000,000 worth of insurance in force, flourishing out of
the situation of special premium rates for Negroes instituted
by some companies, and a policy of total exclusion practiced
by others. No work for young Negro men and women in gen¬
eral business? Then they will establish their own businesses
and borrow from the sentimental doctrine of “race pride”
enough propulsion to compensate for the initial deficiencies of
capital. But is this entirely representative of the new Negro
thought? It is not. This increased activity is largely an oppor¬
tunistic policy, with its firmest foothold in the South. Where
it exists in the North it has been almost wholly transplanted
by southern Negroes. The cities of the North where conditions
tend most, in special instances to approach the restrictions of
the South, become the most active business centers. The
greater the isolation, the more pronounced and successful this
intensive group commercialism.

Or, to take another angle of this picture: Mr. Marcus Gar¬
vey has been accused of inspiring and leading a movement for
the “re-exaltation” of things black, for the exploitation of
Negro resources for the profit of Negroes, and for the re-estab-

296 THE V(EW O^EGRO

lishment of prestige to things Negro. As a fact, he has merely
had the clairvoyance to place himself at the head of a docile
sector of a whole population which, in different degrees, has
been expressing an indefinable restlessness and broadening of
spirit. The Garvey movement itself is an exaggeration of this
current mood which attempts to reduce these vague longings to
concrete symbols of faith. In this great sweep of the Negro
population are comprehended the awkward gestures of the
awakening black peasantry, the new desire of Negroes for an
independent status, the revolt against a culture which has but
partially (and again unevenly) digested the Negro masses —
the black peasants least of all. It finds a middle ground in the
feelings of kinship with all oppressed dark peoples, as articu¬
lated so forcefully by the Negro press, and takes, perhaps, its
highest expression in the objectives of the Pan-African Con¬
gress.

New emotions accompany these new objectives. Where
there is ferment and unrest, there is change. Old traditions are
being shaken and rooted up by the percussion of new ideas.
In this the year of our Lord, 1925, extending across the entire
country are seventeen cities in violent agitation over Negro
residence areas, and where once there was acquiescence, silent
or ineffectually grumbly, there are now in evidence new con¬
victions which more often prompt to resistance. It is this spirit,
aided by increased living standards and refined tastes, that has
resulted in actual housing clashes, the most notorious of which
have been occurring in Detroit, Michigan, where, with a Negro
population increase of more than 500 per cent in the past ten
years, this new resistance has clashed with the spirit of the
South, likewise drawn there by the same economic forces luring
and pushing the Negroes. This same spirit was evidenced in
the serious racial clashes which flared up in a dozen cities after
the first huge migration of Negroes northward, and which took
a sad toll in lives. Claude McKay, the young Negro poet,
caught the mood of the new Negro in this, and molded it into
fiery verse which Negro newspapers copied and recopied:

If we must die, let it not be like hogs,

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot . . .

THE NEW NEGRO IN Jt NEW WORLD 297

Nor does this embrace all of the ragged pattern. Silently
and yet with such steady persistence that it has the aspect of
an utterly distinct movement, the newer spirits are beginning
to free themselves from the slough of that servile feeling
(now happily classified by the psychologists as the “inferiority
complex”) inherited from slavery and passed along with viru¬
lence for over fifty years. The generation in whom lingered
memories of the painful degradation of slavery could not be
expected to cherish even those pearls of song and poetry born
of suffering. They would be expected to do just as they did:
rule out the Sorrow Songs as the product of ignorant slaves,
taboo dialect as incorrect English, and the priceless folk lore
as the uncultured expression of illiterates, — an utterly conscious
effort to forget the past, and take over, suddenly, the symbols
of that culture which had so long ground their bodies and
spirits in the dirt. The newer voices, at a more comfortable
distance, are beginning to find a new beauty in these heritages,
and new values in their own lives.

Less is heard of the two historic “schools of thought” clash¬
ing ceaselessly and loud over the question of industrial and
higher education for the Negro. Both schools are, sensibly,
now taken for granted as quite necessary. The new questions
of the industrial schools are concerned with adjusting their
curricula to the new fields of industry in which Negro workers
will play an ever mounting role, and with expanding their
academic and college courses ; while the new question of the
universities is that of meeting the demand for trained Negroes
for business, the professions, and the arts. The level of edu¬
cation has been lifted through the work of both, and the new
level, in itself, is taking care of the sentiment about the
division.

Thus the new frontier of Negro life is flung out in a jagged,
uneven but progressive pattern. For a group historically re¬
tarded and not readily assimilated, contact with its surrounding
culture breeds quite uneven results. There is no fixed racial
level of culture. The lines cut both vertically and horizon¬
tally. There are as great differences, with reference to culture,
education, sophistication, among Negroes as between the races.

*9% THE O^EW ^ EGRO

(This overlapping is probably what the new psychologists have
been trying to point out with their elaborately documented
intelligence measurements.) And just as these currents move
down and across and intersect, so may one find an utter maze
of those rationalizations of attitudes of differently placed Negro
groups toward life in general, and their status in particular.
But a common purpose is integrating these energies born of
new conflicts, and it is not at all improbable that the culture
which has both nourished and abused these strivings will, in
the end, be enriched by them.

A k

THE NEW SCENE

THE ROAD

Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze,

A leaping clay hill lost among the trees,

The bleeding note of rapture streaming thrush
Caught in a drowsy hush

And stretched out in a single singing line of dusky song.
Ah little road, brown as my race is brown,

Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride,

Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down.

Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry!

— Helene Johnson .

HARLEM : THE CULTURE CAPITAL

James Weldon Johnson

In the history of New York, the significance of the name
Harlem has changed from Dutch to Irish to Jewish to Negro.
Of these changes, the last has come most swiftly. Through¬
out colored America, from Massachusetts to Mississippi, and
across the continent to Los Angeles and Seattle, its name,
which as late as fifteen years ago had scarcely been heard, now
stands for the Negro metropolis. Harlem is indeed the great
Mecca for the sight-seer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the
adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious and the talented
of the whole Negro world; for the lure of it has reached down
to every island of the Carib Sea and has penetrated even into
Africa.

In the make-up of New York, Harlem is not merely a Negro
colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest
Negro city in the world. It is not a slum or a fringe, it is
located in the heart of Manhattan and occupies one of the
most beautiful and healthful sections of the city. It is not a
“quarter” of dilapidated tenements, but is made up of new-
law apartments and handsome dwellings, with well-paved and
well-lighted streets. It has its own churches, social an<J civic
centers, shops, theaters and other places of amusement. And
it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other
spot on earth. A stranger who rides up magnificent Seventh
Avenue on a bus or in an automobile must be struck with sur¬
prise at the transformation which takes place after he crosses
One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Beginning there, the
population suddenly darkens and he rides through twenty-five
solid blocks where the passers-by, the shoppers, those sitting
in restaurants, coming out of theaters, standing in doorways
and looking out of windows are practically all Negroes; and

302 THE 2(EW R(EGR0

then he emerges where the population as suddenly becomes
white again. There is nothing just like it in any other city
in the country, for there is no preparation for it; no change
in the character of the houses and streets; no change, indeed,
in the appearance of the people, except their color.

Negro Harlem is practically a development of the past
decade, but the story behind it goes back a long way. There
have always been colored people in New York. In the middle
of the last century they lived in the vicinity of Lispenard,
Broome and Spring Streets. When Washington Square and
lower Fifth Avenue was the center of aristocratic life, the
colored people, whose chief occupation was domestic service
in the homes of the rich, lived in a fringe and were scattered
in nests to the south, east and west of the square. As late as
the ’8o’s the major part of the colored population lived in
Sullivan, Thompson, Bleecker, Grove, Minetta Lane and
adjacent streets. It is curious to note that some of these nests
still persist. In a number of the blocks of Greenwich Village
and Little Italy may be found small groups of Negroes who
have never lived in any other section of the city. By about
1890 the center of colored population had shifted to the
upper Twenties and lower Thirties west of Sixth Avenue.
Ten years later another considerable shift northward had been

made to West Fifty-third Street.

The West Fifty-third Street settlement deserves some special
mention because it ushered in a new phase of life among col¬
ored New Yorkers. Three rather well-appointed hotels were
opened in the street and they quickly became the centers of a
sort of fashionable life that hitherto had not existed. On
Sunday evenings these hotels served dinner to music and at¬
tracted crowds of well-dressed diners. One of these hotels,
The Marshall, became famous as the headquarters of Negro
talent. There gathered the actors, the musicians, the com¬
posers, the writers, the singers, dancers and vaudevillians.
There one went to get a close-up of Williams and Walker,
Cole and Johnson, Ernest Hogan, Will Marion Cook, Jim
Europe, Aida Overton, and of others equally and less known.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was frequently there whenever he was

303

THE C(EW SCENE

Sin New York. Numbers of those who love to shine by the light
reflected from celebrities were always to be found. The first
modern jazz band ever heard in New York, or, perhaps any¬
where, was organized at The Marshall. It was a playing¬
singing-dancing orchestra, making the first dominant use of
banjos, saxophones, clarinets and trap drums in combination,
and was called The Memphis Students. Jim Europe was a
member of that band, and out of it grew the famous Clef
Club, of which he was the noted leader, and which for a long
time monopolized the business of “entertaining” private parties
and furnishing music for the new dance craze. Also in the
Clef Club was “Buddy” Gilmore who originated trap drum¬
ming as it is now practised, and set hundreds of white men to
juggling their sticks and doing acrobatic stunts while they
manipulated a dozen other noise-making devices aside from
their drums. A good many well-known white performers fre¬
quented The Marshall and for seven or eight years the place
was one of the sights of New York.

The move to Fifty-third Street was the result of the oppor¬
tunity to get into newer and better houses. About 1900 the
. move to Harlem began, and for the same reason. Harlem
had been overbuilt with large, new-law apartment houses, but
rapid transportation to that section was very inadequate — the
Lenox Avenue Subway had not yet been built — and landlords
were finding difficulty in keeping houses on the east side of the
section filled. Residents along and near Seventh Avenue were
fairly well served by the Eighth Avenue Elevated. A col¬
ored man, in the real estate business at this time, Philip A.
Payton, approached several of these landlords with the propo¬
sition that he would fill their empty or partially empty houses
with steady colored tenants. The suggestion was accepted,
and one or two houses on One Hundred and Thirty-fourth
Street east of Lenox Avenue were taken over. Gradually
other houses were filled. The whites paid little attention to
the movement until it began to spread west of Lenox Avenue ;
they then took steps to check it. They proposed through a
financial organization, the Hudson Realty Company, to buy
in all properties occupied by colored people and evict the

304 THE CN^EW U^EGRO

tenants. The Negroes countered by similar methods. Payton
formed the Afro-American Realty Company, a Negro cor¬
poration organized for the purpose of buying and leasing houses
for occupancy by colored people. Under this counter stroke
the opposition subsided for several years.

But the continually increasing pressure of colored people
to the west over the Lenox Avenue dead line caused the oppo¬
sition to break out again, but in a new and more menacing
form. Several white men undertook to organize all the white
people of the community for the purpose of inducing financial
institutions not to lend money or renew mortgages on proper¬
ties occupied by colored people. In this effort they had
considerable success, and created a situation which has not yet
been completely overcome, a situation which is one of the hard¬
est and most unjustifiable the Negro property owner in Har¬
lem has to contend with. The Afro-American Realty Com¬
pany was now defunct, but two or three colored men of means
stepped into the breach. Philip A. Payton and J. C. Thomas
bought two five-story apartments, dispossessed the white ten¬
ants and put in colored. J. B. Nail bought a row of five
apartments and did the same thing. St. Philip’s Church bought
a row of thirteen apartment houses on One Hundred and
Thirty-fifth Street, running from Seventh Avenue almost to

Lenox.

The situation now resolved itself into an actual contest.
Negroes not only continued to occupy available apartment
houses, but began to purchase private dwellings between
Lenox and Seventh Avenues. Then the whole movement, in
the eyes of the whites, took on the aspect of an “invasion” j
they became panic-stricken and began fleeing as from a plague.
The presence of one colored family in a block, no matter
how well bred and orderly, was sufficient to precipitate a flight.
House after house and block after block was actually deserted.
It was a great demonstration of human beings running amuck.
None of them stopped to reason why they were doing it or
what would happen if they didn’t. The banks and lending
companies holding mortgages on these deserted houses were
compelled to take them over. For some time they held these

THE O^EW SCENE 305

houses vacant, preferring to do that and carry the charges than
to rent or sell them to colored people. But values dropped
and continued to drop until at the outbreak of the war in
Europe property in the northern part of Harlem had reached
the nadir.

In the meantime the Negro colony was becoming more
stable ; the churches were being moved from the lower part
of the city j social and civic centers were being formed ; and
gradually a community was being evolved. Following the
outbreak of the war in Europe Negro Harlem received a new
and tremendous impetus. Because of the war thousands of
aliens in the United States rushed back to their native lands to
join the colors and immigration practically ceased. The result
was a critical shortage in labor. This shortage was rapidly
increased as the United States went more and more largely
into the business of furnishing munitions and supplies to the
warring countries. To help meet this shortage of common
labor Negroes were brought up from the South. The govern¬
ment itself took the first steps, following the practice in vogue
in Germany of shifting labor according to the supply and
demand in various parts of the country. The example of the
government was promptly taken up by the big industrial con¬
cerns, which sent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of labor agents
into the South who recruited Negroes by wholesale. I was in
Jacksonville, Fla., for a while at that time, and I sat one day
and watched the stream of migrants passing to take the train.
For hours they passed steadily, carrying flimsy suit cases, new
and shiny, rusty old ones, bursting at the seams, boxes and
bundles and impedimenta of all sorts, including banjos, gui¬
tars, birds in cages and what not. Similar scenes were being
enacted in cities and towns all over that region. The first wave
of the great exodus of Negroes from the South was on. Great
numbers of these migrants headed for New York or eventually
got there, and naturally the majority went up into Harlem.
But the Negro population of Harlem was not swollen by
migrants from the South alone j the opportunity for Negro
labor exerted its pull upon the Negroes of the West Indies,

3o 6 THE E^EW y(EGR0

and those islanders in the course of time poured into Harlem
to the number of twenty-five thousand or more.

These new-comers did not have to look for work; work
looked for them, and at wages of which they had never even
dreamed. And here is where the unlooked for, the unprece¬
dented, the miraculous happened. According to all precon¬
ceived notions, these Negroes suddenly earning large sums of
money for the first time in their lives should have had their
heads turned; they should have squandered it in the most
silly and absurd manners imaginable. Later, after the United
States had entered the war and even Negroes in the South
were making money fast, many stories in accord with the tra¬
dition came out of that section. There was the one about the
colored man who went into a general store and on hearing a
phonograph for the first time promptly ordered six of them,
one for each child in the house. I shall not stop to discuss
whether Negroes in the South did that sort of thing or not,
but I do know that those who got to New York didn’t. The
Negroes of Harlem, for the greater part, worked and saved
their money. Nobody knew how much they had saved until
congestion made expansion necessary for tenants and owner¬
ship profitable for landlords, and they began to buy property.
Persons who would never be suspected of having money bought
property. The Rev. W. W. Brown, pastor of the Metropoli¬
tan Baptist Church, repeatedly made “Buy Property” the text
of his sermons. A large part of his congregation carried out
the injunction. The church itself set an example by purchas¬
ing a magnificent brownstone church building on Seventh Ave¬
nue from a white congregation. Buying property became a
fever. At the height of this activity, that is, 1 920-21, it was
not an uncommon thing for a colored washerwoman or cook
to go into a real estate office and lay down from one thousand
to five thousand dollars on a house. “Pig Foot Mary” is a
character in Harlem. Everybody who knows the corner of
Lenox Avenue and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street
knows “Mary” and her stand, and has been tempted by the
smell of her pigsfeet, fried chicken and hot corn, even if he
has not been a customer. “Mary,” whose real name is Mrs.

James Weldon Johnson

THE CNiEW SCENE 307

Mary Dean, bought the five-story apartment house at the
corner of Seventh Avenue and One Hundred and Thirty-
seventh Street at a price of $42,000. Later she sold it to the
Y. W. C. A. for dormitory purposes. The Y. W. C. A. sold
it recently to Adolph Howell, a leading colored undertaker,
the price given being $72,000. Often companies of a half
dozen men combined to buy a house — these combinations were
and still are generally made up of West Indians — and would
produce five or ten thousand dollars to put through the deal.

When the buying activity began to make itself felt, the
lending companies that had been holding vacant the handsome
dwellings on and abutting Seventh Avenue decided to put them
on the market. The values on these houses had dropped to
the lowest mark possible and they were put up at astonishingly
low prices. Houses that had been bought at from $15,000
to $20,000 were sold at one-third those figures. They were
quickly gobbled up. The Equitable Life Assurance Company
held 106 model private houses that were designed by Stanford
White. They are built with courts running straight through
the block and closed off by wrought-iron gates. Every one
of these houses was sold within eleven months at an aggregate
price of about two million dollars. To-day they are probably
worth about 100 per cent more. And not only have private
dwellings and similar apartments been bought but big elevator
apartments have been taken over. Corporations have been
organized for this purpose. Two of these, The Antillian
Realty Company, composed of West Indian Negroes, and the
Sphinx Securities Company, composed of American and West
Indian Negroes, represent holdings amounting to approxi¬
mately $750,000. Individual Negroes and companies in the
South have invested in Harlem real estate. About two years
ago a Negro institution of Savannah, G a., bought a parcel for
$115,000 which it sold a month or so ago at a profit of
$110,000.

I am informed by John E. Nail, a successful colored real
estate dealer of Harlem and a reliable authority, that the total
value of property in Harlem owned and controlled by colored
people would at a conservative estimate amount to more than

3o8 THE T^EW T^EGRO

sixty million dollars. These figures are amazing, especially
when we take into account the short time in which they have
been piled up. Twenty years ago Negroes were begging for
the privilege of renting a flat in Harlem. Fifteen years ago
barely a half dozen colored men owned real property in all
Manhattan. And down to ten years ago the amount that had
been acquired in Harlem was comparatively negligible. To¬
day Negro Harlem is practically owned by Negroes.

The question naturally arises, “Are the Negroes going to be
able to hold Harlem?” If they have been steadily driven
northward for the past hundred years and out of less desirable
sections, can they hold this choice bit of Manhattan Island?
It is hardly probable that Negroes will hold Harlem indefi¬
nitely, but when they are forced out it will not be for the
same reasons that forced them out of former quarters in New
York City. The situation is entirely different and without
precedent. When colored people do leave Harlem, their
homes, their churches, their investments and their businesses,
it will be because the land has bcome so valuable they can no
longer afford to live on it. But the date of another move
northward is very far in the future. What will Harlem be
and become in the meantime? Is there danger that the Negro
may lose his economic status in New York and be unable to
hold his property? Will Harlem become merely a famous
ghetto, or will it be a center of intellectual, cultural and eco¬
nomic forces exerting an influence throughout the world, espe¬
cially upon Negro peoples? Will it become a point of friction
between the races in New York?

I think there is less danger to the Negroes of New York
of losing out economically and industrially than to the Negroes
of any large city in the North. In most of the big industrial
centers Negroes are engaged in gang labor. They are em¬
ployed by thousands in the stockyards in Chicago, by thousands
in the automobile plants in Detroit ; and in those cities they are
likely to be the first to be let go, and in thousands, with every
business depression. In New York there is hardly such a
thing as gang labor among Negroes, except among the long¬
shoremen, and it is in the longshoremen’s unions, above all

THE S^EW SCENE 309

others, that Negroes stand on an equal footing. Employment
among Negroes in New York is highly diversified ; in the
main they are employed more as individuals than as non¬
integral parts of a gang. Furthermore, Harlem is gradually
becoming more and more a self-supporting community. Ne¬
groes there are steadily branching out into new businesses and
enterprises in which Negroes are employed. So the danger of
great numbers of Negroes being thrown out of work at once,
with a resulting economic crisis among them, is less in New
York than in most of the large cities of the North to which
Southern migrants have come.

These facts have an effect which goes beyond the economic
and industrial situation. They have a direct bearing on the
future character of Harlem and on the question as to whether
Harlem will be a point of friction between the races in New
York. It is true that Harlem is a Negro community, well
defined and stable ; anchored to its fixed homes, churches,
institutions, business and amusement places ; having its own
working, business and professional classes. It is experiencing
a constant growth of group consciousness and community feel¬
ing. Harlem is, therefore, in many respects, typically Negro.
It has many unique characteristics. It has movement, color,
gayety, singing, dancing, boisterous laughter and loud talk.
One of its outstanding features is brass band parades. Hardly
a Sunday passes but that there are several of these parades of
which many are gorgeous with regalia and insignia. Almost
any excuse will do — the death of an humble member of the
Elks, the laying of a cornerstone, the “turning out” of the
order of this or that. In many of these characteristics it is
similar to the Italian colony. But withal, Harlem grows more
metropolitan and more a part of New York all the while. Why
is it then that its tendency is not to become a mere “quarter”?

I shall give three reasons that seem to me to be important
in their order. First, the language of Harlem is not alien ;
it is not Italian or Yiddish ; it is English. Harlem talks
American, reads American, thinks American. Second, Harlem
is not physically a “quarter.” It is not a section cut off. It
is merely a zone through which four main arteries of the city

3io

THE JA CEW TiEGRO

run. Third, the fact that there is little or no gang labor gives
Harlem Negroes the opportunity for individual expansion and
individual contacts with the life and spirit of New York. A
thousand Negroes from Mississippi put to work as a gang in
a Pittsburgh steel mill will for a long time remain a thousand
Negroes from Mississippi. Under the conditions that prevail
in New York they would all within six months become New
Yorkers. The rapidity with which Negroes become good
New Yorkers is one of the marvels to observers.

These three reasons form a single reason why there is small
probability that Harlem will ever be a point of race friction
between the races in New York. One of the principal factors
in the race riot in Chicago in 1919 was the fact that at that
time there were 12,000 Negroes employed in gangs in the
stockyards. There was considerable race feeling in Harlem
at the time of the hegira of white residents due to the “inva¬
sion/’ but that feeling, of course, is no more. Indeed, a
number of the old white residents who didn’t go or could not
get away before the housing shortage struck New York are
now living peacefully side by side with colored residents.
In fact, in some cases white and colored tenants occupy apart¬
ments in the same house. Many white merchants still do
business in thickest Harlem. On the whole, I know of no
place in the country where the feeling between the races is
so cordial and at the same time so matter-of-fact and taken
for granted. One of the surest safeguards against an outbreak
in New York such as took place in so many Northern cities
in the summer of 1919 is the large proportion of Negro police
on duty in Harlem.

To my mind, Harlem is more than a Negro community j
it is a large scale laboratory experiment in the race problem.
The statement has often been made that if Negroes were trans¬
ported to the North in large numbers the race problem with
all of its acuteness and with new aspects would be transferred
with them. Well, 175,000 Negroes live closely together in
Harlem, in the heart of New York — 75,000 more than live
in any Southern city — and do so without any race friction. Nor
is there any unusual record of crime. I once heard a captain

THE Wi EW SCENE 311

of the 38th Police Precinct (the Harlem precinct) say that
on the whole it was the most law-abiding precinct in the city.
New York guarantees its Negro citizens the fundamental rights
of American citizenship and protects them in the exercise of
those rights. In return the Negro loves New York and is
proud of it, and contributes in his way to its greatness. He
still meets with discriminations, but possessing the basic rights,
he knows that these discriminations will be abolished.

I believe that the Negro’s advantages and opportunities are
greater in Harlem than in any other place in the country, and
that Harlem will become the intellectual, the cultural and the
financial center for Negroes of the United States, and will exert
a vital influence upon all Negro peoples,

HOWARD : THE NATIONAL NEGRO

UNIVERSITY

Kelly Miller

Howard University shares with Fisk, Atlanta and Wilber-
force the proud tradition of over half a century of service in
the liberal education of Negro youth. To-day, after years of
painstaking advance, it shares with a dozen or more such
Negro colleges the rank and standing of an institution of
standard and certified collegiate grade. But just as surely
as there is a need and place for each, — and for that matter
more, of these institutions, just so certain is it that one of
them must eventually become the conscious and recognized
center of the higher life and cultural inspiration and aspira¬
tion of the race. Such by reason of its origin, location, con¬
stituency, maintenance and objective, Howard Unversity as¬
pires to be. Largest, oldest as an avowed university in plan
and pattern, national in scope and support, Howard University
already has advantages that make plausible its claim to be
“the Capstone of Negro Education.” But with the rapid
development and maturing of the race life of the Negro
to-day, and the almost floodlike surge of race consciousness
and purpose, the competition for primacy among Negro insti¬
tutions of learning is swift and will be to the swift. The title
and prestige must eventually go to that institution that incor¬
porates most readily the progressive spirit of the new genera¬
tion, best focuses the racial mind, and becomes the center
radiating the special influence of leadership and enlightenment
which a culturally organized people needs.

The Negro in America constitutes a community far more
separate and distinct in needs, aims, and aspirations than any
other racial or sectarian element of our national life. The
Catholic, Jewish and Protestant denominations develop their
own local, and national institutions to foster the peculiar genius

312

THE C^EW SCENE 313

and aspirations of their several communions, apart from the
general educational life of the nation as a whole, in which they
share on equal terms with the rest. In a much deeper sense,
under the present conditions of his group life, does the Negro
stand in need of local schools and colleges with a national
university as a capstone devoted to racial aims and objectives.
Howard University assumes the title and function of the na¬
tional Negro University without egotism or vain boasting, and
with the appreciation of the place and importance and special
spheres of influence of other worthy institutions of learning
and service in the same field. Chartered in 1867 by the Con¬
gress of the United States, it is located at the National Capital,
and is supported in large part by government appropriations.
The current catalogue carries an enrollment of 2,046 students
of the colored race drawn from thirty-six states and eleven
foreign countries. Its essential objective from the beginning
has been to develop a leadership for the reclamation and
uplift of the Negro race through the influence of the higher
culture. Further, Howard University can modestly claim that
it is the only institution of its class that maintains the full
complement of standardized academic and professional depart¬
ments which go to make up the normal American university.
With over two thousand students in its collegiate and profes¬
sional schools, it does not operate any courses below the col¬
legiate level. This would easily duplicate the enrollment in
all the other Negro institutions combined in courses of like
grade and character. Advantage and opportunity confer obli¬
gation. Howard University must, therefore, by sheer force
of circumstances, assume first place in the higher learning and
life of the Negro peoples or fall below the level of its oppor¬
tunity and popular expectation.

All Negro schools and colleges are emergencies from the
same background. They grew out of the smoke and fire of
the Civil War, and the patriotic missionarism of emancipation.
General O. O. Howard, a well-known hero of the Civil War,
was the founder and first President of this University which
bears his name as well as the impress of his spirit. He was
at the time Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and

3i4 THE ViEW ViEGRO

focussed upon the task of Negro education the patriotic, re¬
ligious, and philanthropic sentiment of the American people. **
It might be said that the University was reared on these three
pillars. The fundamental aim of the founders was to build
up an enlightened leadership within the race. To do this it
was necessary to refute derogatory dogmas hoary with age
and tradition. An enslaved people had not been permitted to
taste of the tree of knowledge, which is the tree of good and
evil. This coveted tree has been zealously and jealously
guarded by the flaming sword of prejudice, kept keen and
bright by avarice and cupidity. It was said that the Negro
could not be educated. The missionaries refuted the charge
by educating him. Phyllis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker and
Frederick Douglass were looked upon as freaks of nature.
Experience soon showed that Negro youth fresh from the yoke !
of slavery could master the white man’s knowledge, so-called,
in the same length of time and with comparable degree of
thoroughness, as the most favored youth of the most favored ,

race.

Nowhere in all history has education so fully vindicated its
claim as the process of unlocking and releasing, the higher
powers and faculties of human nature. The circumstances
amid which this work had its inception read like the swiftly
moving scenes of a mighty drama. In track of the victorious <
army of the North there followed a valiant band of heroes ]
and heroines to do battle in a worthier cause. Theirs was no
carnal warfare; it was the battle against the powers of darkness
entrenched in the ignorance and poverty of an imbruted race, j
A worthier or more heroic band has never furnished theme for
sage or bard. They were sustained by an unbounded zeal
amounting almost to fanaticism, and were drunk with the new
wine of human enthusiasm. They gave the highest proof that
the nineteenth century furnished, that the religion of the Christ
was not a dead formula of barren abstract moralism, but a
living vital power. The pen of the beneficiary never tires
portraying the virtues of the benefactor. Their monument is
builded in the hearts and hopes of a race struggling upward
from ignorance to enlightenment, from incompetence to effi-

THE J(EW SCENE 31 5

ciency. It was in this wise that Howard University and its
sister institutions were born.

Howard University assumed the name and rank of a uni¬
versity from the beginning. To project an institution of
learning on the highest intellectual standards for a race that
had not yet learned the use of letters was an astounding feat
of faith. But the faith of the founders has been abundantly
vindicated by the fruits of their foundation. Howard Uni¬
versity not only assumed the name, but the several departments
with range and reaches of studies which justified the title of
university according to the prevailing standards of American
institutions of learning. In addition to the regular collegiate
courses, it carried departments of agriculture, theology, law
and medicine. These have been continued practically as pro¬
jected down to the present time. This institution, like all others
of its class, had to begin with the primary grades of instruction,
as it was intended to meet the needs of a race at the zero point
of culture. But by reason of the rapid progress of the educa¬
tion of the Negro race at large, it soon found it expedient to
eliminate the lower grades one by one, until it now operates
only degree courses of a collegiate and professional character.

Howard University has thus modernized and extended its
curriculum until it now has a recognized place in the sister¬
hood of American colleges. It is on the accredited list of the
Association of Schools and Colleges of the Middle States and
Maryland, which includes such nationally known institutions as
Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and the University of Penn¬
sylvania.

Howard University was chartered as a university for .the
education of youth in the liberal arts and sciences. At that
time education was extolled chiefly in its cultural and humani¬
tarian aspects. The stress of emphasis was laid on manhood
rather than mechanism. The man was educated for his worth
rather than his work. To be somebody counted for more than
to do something. Produce the man, the rest will follow. The
chief aim of the founders of Howard University as of other
Negro institutions of like character was to develop a body of
Negro men and women with disciplined faculties and liberal-

3i 6 THE CN^E W V(EGRO

ized powers with the hope and expectation that they would
quickly assume their place as leaders of the life of the masses
by virtue of the rightful claim and authority of the higher
culture. There has been a great change in educational thought
and opinion since that day. The older advocacy was much
more complimentary to the inherent claims and dignity of |
humanity than the modern vocational point of view. The I
vocational objective of education, however, has proved the more
persuasive, so that our entire educational fabric is more or less j
dominated by the modern bias. Howard University, along
with the rest, has had to shift the basis of its plea in harmony
with the newer demand. But the motive, reason, end in view
remain the same. Its new objective as the old is to develop I
leaders for the wise guidance and direction of the masses of
the Negro race. Wherever the blind lead the blind, the whole 1
procession is headed for the inevitable ditch. For want of I
vision the people still perish. Howard University merely
interprets the old ideal in terms of the modern day require- j
ments. The Negro race has as yet no leisure class. There are
no scholars or literati devoted to the pure love of learning ;
whose ulterior aim is to influence public thought and opinion
through the subtle influence of letters. By reason of the
material poverty of the race every educated Negro must first
make a living for himself. The necessities of a livelihood
absorb a large part of his energies. He must exert his leader¬
ship in connection with his vocation. On scanning the. last i
catalogue one might be disposed to look upon Howard Univer¬
sity as a purely vocational school. Its departments comprise the
College of Liberal Arts, the College of Education, the College
of Applied Sciences, the School of Commerce and Finance, .
the School of Music, the School of Public Health, the School
of Religion, the School of Law, the School of Medicine, the
School of Dentistry and the School of Pharmacy. The voca¬
tional aim is connoted in the very captions of the departments
into which the work is divided. Perhaps not a single one of
those who receive the pure arts degree will devote himself to
non-vocational scholarship but will enter immediately upon the
study of one of the professions or upon some practical pursuit.

THE 2(EW SCENE 317

The last commencement program contains the list of 330
graduates, distributed as follows: Bachelor of Arts, 52; Bache¬
lor of Science, 43 ; Bachelor of Science in Commerce, 9 ; Bache¬
lor of Music, 6; Bachelor of Science in Architecture, 1 ; Bache¬
lor of Science in Civil Engineering, 2; Bachelor of Science in
Electrical Engineering, 1 ; Bachelor of Science in Architecture,
1 ; Bachelor of Theology, 4; Diplomas in Theology, 4; Master
of Law, i; Bachelor of Law, 26 ; Doctor of Medicine, 72;
Doctor of Dentistry, 26 ; Pharmaceutical Chemists, 1 1 ; Master
of Arts, 3; Master of Science, 2; Second Lieutenants, U. S.
R. C., 34. Of the three hundred and thirty graduates who
completed their courses last June, 234 were prepared to enter
immediately upon their profession or practical pursuit while the
other ninety-six are making ready to follow in their train.
The leadership of the Negro race must be found in profes¬
sions which furnish the leader a livelihood in the meantime.

The great responsibilities that devolve upon the Negro
professional man and woman make it all the more imperative,
however, that their preparation should be laid upon a double
basis of exact knowledge and liberal culture. Howard Uni¬
versity does not insist less now than formerly upon the cultural
idea in education, but rather that this culture should reach and
ramify the professional and practical vocations. The ideal of
Howard University, as the writer has interpreted it through
the years, is to inculcate upon the mind of Negro youth a con¬
scious sense of manhood through the influence of the higher
culture. This aroused sense of the highest human values will
manifest itself in whatever mode of service the world for the
time may need. The writer in this connection may be per¬
mitted to quote what he has said in another place. “Man is
more than industry, trade, commerce, politics, government,
science, art, literature or religion ; all of which grow out of his
inherent needs and necessities. The fundamental aim of educa¬
tion, therefore, should be manhood rather than mechanism.
The ideal is not a working man, but a man working ; not a busi¬
ness man, but a man doing business; not a school man, but a
man teaching school; not a statesman, but a man handling the
affairs of state; not a medicine man, but a man practicing

3i8 THE O^EW 2(EGR0

medicine 3 not a clergyman, but a man devoted to the things of
the soul.” Only upon such a platform, the writer submits,
could Howard University justify its claims as the national
University of the colored race.

A university which claims to embody, express and impart
the aims and aspirations of any group must necessarily be a
social institution. It must assemble on its staff those who
embody in their own personality the traditions, aims and aspira¬
tions of the community for which it is established. The Cath¬
olic University of America must be under the leadership and :
direction of Catholic sages, statesmen and scholars. The Jew¬
ish University whether in America or Palestine must derive its
genius and inspiration from the elders of Israel. But here, as
elsewhere, the anomaly of the Negro situation obtrudes itself.
At the time of the foundation of Howard University and other
institutions of its character the Negro race had to depend upon
vicarious leadership, because it had not at that time produced a
competent body of men in its own ranks with developed capaci¬
ties for competent and efficient self-expression and wise self- 3
direction. Then came the missionaries from the North with
the love for God in their hearts and with the Bible in the right
hand and the school books in the left. They regarded them- >
selves, not as superior creatures, but as elder brothers. They
voluntarily divested themselves of all superior claims and
pretensions in order that they might the more effectually serve
those who needed their help. They planted Howard Uni¬
versity and projected it as the national institution for the j
training of leaders of the benefited race. They understood j

that their tenure was temporary. i

The members of one group cannot furnish ideals for another,
if they must needs live a life apart from those whom they
would serve. The sentiment of the times has changed. Crys¬
tallized laws and customs, in sections where the Negro colleges
are located, now make it impossible for the white man to iden¬
tify his life and interests with the colored race, even if he
desires so to do. The two races cannot ride in the same car,
send their children to the same school, or attend the same
church, and must perforce walk the streets apart. Under such

3I9

THE O^EW SCENE

circumstances a perfect meeting of minds is impossible. Any
national Negro enterprise must derive its future leadership
and guidance from within the race.

A national enterprise for any group is ordinarily supposed to
derive its support from internal sources. There can be no
stable equilibrium so long as the center of gravity falls out¬
side. Interestingly enough, Howard University, almost from
the beginning, has rested on the material maintenance of the
Negro race, through its own contributions by way of tuition,
and through governmental grants based upon the just dues of
the Negro from the public treasury. Quite unfortunately, as
the writer feels, general philanthropy that has done so much
for other institutions has all but neglected the claims of this
institution. The last report of the treasurer shows that for
the fiscal year 1923-4, the students contributed in tuition
and in other fees, $179,000. Congress appropriated $190,000,
while donations from all other sources amounted to only
$27,000. During the past two years, the Negro race has con¬
tributed $250,000 for the endowment of the Medical School
to meet a like contribution from the General Education Board.
And yet Howard University makes the strongest possible
appeal, not merely to the self-support of the Negro himself,
but for the vicarious help of American statesmanship, philan¬
thropy and religion combined. The great objective of philan¬
thropy in this field is to help the Negro to help himself, and
to relieve the national tension around the issue of race. There
is no institution in the land that is so well calculated to deal
effectually with the Negro problem as a national issue as is
Howard University. The right type of leadership is essential
to any attempt at solution. Howard University, as we have
seen, furnishes in very large part the leadership for the race.

In 1879, the President of Howard University persuaded
Congress to vote a grant of $10,000 to aid Howard University
because of the national character of the type of work it was
doing. From that time to the present the annual congressional
grants have gradually increased, until the fiscal year 1924, the
allotment amounted to $365,000. The total sum appropriated
during the forty-six years amounts to the magnificent sum of

320 THE V(EW C^EGRO

$3,568,815. As result the University has sent into the field
already white unto harvest over six thousand graduates who
are distributed over the entire range of the professional and
practical callings and are scattered over the entire area wher¬
ever any considerable number of Negroes reside. Congress is
challenged to isolate a like sum that has resulted in so much
national service and advantage as the amount devoted to this
national University of the Negro race.

But a national Negro university must be a conscious and
recognized center of the higher life and cultural interests of
the race. Howard University has gathered about itself more
than a hundred Negro educators, who are filling its various
chairs of instruction. There cannot be duplicated anywhere in
the world such an aggregation of Negro educators, scholars and
thinkers. With such a nucleus, Howard must become in due
time the recognized center of Negro scholarship, especially for
the fostering and development of those special studies of race
history and of the pressing contemporary problems of race rela¬
tions which are, in last analysis, the special field and functions
of such an institution. There exists as yet no such center in
spite of the obvious need for one. Every group, coming into
cultural maturity, needs its Forum and its Acropolis. A na¬
tional Negro university must shed the light of reason on the
particular issues of Negro life and add the guidance of science
to the tangled issues of race adjustment. A body of intellec¬
tual, moral and spiritual elite, consecrated to these ideals and .
co-operating in this aim, is calculated to put a new front on the
whole scheme of racial life and aspiration. Under the stim¬
ulus of such a conception of its mission, Howard University, or
the institution that most zealously undertakes it, will become
the Mecca of ambitious Negro youth from all parts of the land
and from all lands.

It is the internal urge of this service, racial and national,
that more than any external pressure or urgency of educational
segregation gives the Negro college of the present its truest
reason for being. What is the need of Howard University,
one might ask, when every first-class university in the North
and West is open to any candidate qualified to meet its require-

321

?HE O^EW SCENE

ments without regard to race or color? The very fact that an
institution would exclude a candidate who measures up to its
intellectual, moral and financial standards, merely on the basis
of race, is ample proof that it is not first class. Few institutions
that are zealous to maintain good repute in the eyes of the
world would have the candor to acknowledge such basis of
exclusion without apology. Colored youth in increasing num¬
bers are entering Northern institutions and are gaining distinc¬
tion in both the intellectual and in the athletic arenas. Some
go so far as to deprecate the existence of distinctively Negro
colleges and universities, claiming that capable colored youth
can find accommodation in institutions, which can furnish su¬
perior advantages and facilities to those any Negro school is
likely to possess. It would be absurd for Howard University
or any other Negro school to claim that it can match the
material and intellectual facilities of those great educational
establishments with millions of wealth and centuries of tradi¬
tion. One might as well ask, or had better ask, the rationale
of Jewish Seminaries or of Methodist colleges and universities.
These racial and denominational schools impart to the member¬
ship of their community something which the general educa¬
tional institution is wholly unable to inculcate. But for the
Negro college, Negro scholarship would decay, and Negro
leadership would be wanting in effectiveness and zeal. The
Negro college must furnish stimulus to hesitant Negro scholar¬
ship, garner, treasure and nourish group tradition, enlighten
both races with a sense of the cultural worth and achievement
of the constituency it represents, and supply the cultural guid¬
ance of the race.

The insurgence of race consciousness is indeed the most
noticeable feature in the trend of modern day tendencies. With
it, the place of the Negro in the general scheme of things is
growing more defined. The primary need of the race is a
philosophy of life, whereby hope, courage and ambition
can be maintained amidst an environment which seems hostile
and crushing. This philosophy must be based upon the funda¬
mental principles of democracy and human brotherhood, yet it
must reckon with those existing circumstances and conditions

3 22 THE J(EW C^EGRO

which would frustrate these great ideals. The Negro race must
live and move and have its being amidst the difficulties and
vicissitudes of the tangled issues of race adjustment. Ambitious
and high-minded Negro youth must preserve the spirit of
optimism and hope. Pessimism enfeebles the faculties, para¬
lyzes the energies and sours the soul. The race must be re¬
deemed from the fatuity of supine self-surrender and the im-
potency of despair. The national Negro University should
supply this defensive philosophy. Every minor and suppressed
group in the world looks to its central seat of learning for the
emission of that kindly light by which they are to be led to
the goal after which they strive. Howard University must
keep the race spirit courageous and firm, and direct it in har¬
mony with ideals of God, country and truth.

Howard University, located at the seat of government by
which it is fostered and encouraged, deriving its student body
from thirty-six states and eleven foreign countries, justifying
its claim for patriotic and philanthropic support, appealing to
all right-minded Americans for sympathy and co-operation in
carrying out its great mission, is destined to become in truth and
deed the National Negro University. From this unique center
of advantage and opportunity its lines reach to the remotest
ramification of our national domain. From this wide area it
draws the picked youth of an awakening race and sends them
forth to recruit the high places of racial service and leadership.

Such is the function and mission of Howard University. To
this end it appeals to the interest, encouragement and support
of all who believe that in the scheme of human development,
the mind must quicken, stimulate, uplift and sustain the masses.

HAMPTON-TUSKEGEE :
MISS10NERS OF THE MASSES

Robert R. Moton

Hampton and Tuskegee and Points North! A call like this
has been sounding in every important railroad center in the
South since 1915, varying according to location whether in
Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina or Louisiana.
It has been the signal for thousands of Negroes to gather their
bundles, dress-suit cases and lunch boxes, and board the trains
for the great industrial centers of the North — Detroit, Chicago,
Akron, Pittsburgh, Newark, New York, Springfield, Cleveland
and Buffalo. Some have been content to take a shorter flight
and have stopped off at Birmingham, Chattanooga, Newport
News and Norfolk 5 but all of them have been impelled by a
vision, sometimes vague and dim, sometimes sharp and clear,
of better wages, better living conditions and better opportuni¬
ties than have been theirs on the farms and plantations of the
South.

Estimates of the numbers who have joined in this migration
have varied all the way from 350,000 to 1,000,000 but all
have agreed that there has been a steady exodus from the
country to the city, from the soil to the factory. The conse¬
quences have aroused attention both in the section from which
they have come and in the section to which they have moved.
The movement itself has altered conditions which they left
behind and is altering the very conditions which they hoped to
find. For a time the agricultural program of certain sections
of the South was completely upset. In some places there was
an almost complete stagnation of farming operations. Negro
farm laborers left at all seasons of the year, and many a crop
was left ungathered because there were no hands to take it in.

Had such a movement occurred a generation earlier the

result might have been very different not alone for the Negro,

323

324 THE C^EW C^EGRO

but for the South whose economic system is so largely depend¬
ent upon Negro labor, and the North would have been utterly
unable to absorb so great an access to its population. But two
conditions operated simultaneously with this movement of the
Negroes. One was the expansion of industry in the North
consequent on the war, coupled with the depletion of the
ranks of immigrant labor by those returning home to fight.
The other was the fact that for nearly fifty years strong influ¬
ences had been at work among Negroes which enabled them to
adapt themselves more quickly to the change from rural to
urban life and from agricultural to industrial pursuits.

This vast movement of the Negro population was the result
of a wartime demand for labor in the industrial centers North
and South. Negroes had long felt the restraint of restricted
opportunities in the South. Individuals and small groups had
all along been finding release in various sections of the North,
but the great masses were compelled to remain where they
were, as there was at that time no disposition to exploit the
labor supplies of the South. During the same period there
was a mighty influence at work below Mason and Dixon’s Line
enlarging the outlook of the Negro and preparing the race not
only to take advantage of new opportunities but to create
opportunities for themselves in the midst of surrounding con¬
ditions.

This influence was the Hampton-Tuskegee movement in¬
augurated by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong at Hamp¬
ton, Virginia, in 1868 and expanded by his pupil, Booker T.
Washington, at Tuskegee, in the years succeeding through the
remarkable spread of his gospel of industry and self-reliance
throughout the whole of the Negro race. In its early develop¬
ment it was called industrial education, but thoughtful ob¬
servers have long since come to see that the work of Hampton
and Tuskegee is not the training of men and women as mere
units of industry, but rather the training of the individual,
indeed to be self-supporting, but at the same time to be a con¬
tributing element to community life — to be conscious factors
in every community for establishing the highest ideals of
American life and inspiring all whom they touch to win salva-

Robert Russa Moton

325

THE SCENE

tion for themselves and to create by their own efforts that new
and better order of things which it had been vainly hoped
would come from the hands of others.

Hampton was the pioneer in this movement. Down in the
Tidewater section, General Armstrong at the close of the Civil
War took refugees that had gathered from the plantations of
that section and began the solution of their problems by teach¬
ing them to work with their hands while they trained their
minds, and developed the fundamental attributes of industry,
thrift, self-reliance and self-respect. He worked, of course,
with those who came to him, establishing a school to combine
labor with books in the process of education 5 developing the
head, the hand and the heart at the same time. But he did
not stop there. He reached out to the homes and communities
from which his students came and set up there for fathers and
mothers the same standards and ideals of home surroundings
and character development that he was creating for the young
men and women who came to him as students. Home and
community became the ultimate objectives of his labors. Boys
and girls that came to him as students were impressed with the
idea that their training was not merely for their individual
success, but rather that they should be positive factors in im¬
proving life and conditions wherever they might locate.

Of all who came to him, the one pupil most apt to catch
this vision was Booker T. Washington. Out he went from
Hampton to translate his inspiration into deeds. Called to
Alabama to take charge of a projected school, he immediately
set himself to work out in terms of local conditions the ideas
that were instilled in him at Hampton. From the very begin¬
ning he conceived of the whole South as his schoolroom and
the entire Negro race as his class. The one subject which he
taught was life. Arithmetic, reading, geography, history, were
all interpreted in terms of the life surroundings of his students.
He talked of the life they lived. Every day he put them to
work creating life for themselves, building their own buildings,
making their own tools, producing their own food, making their
own clothes and in a hundred other ways supplying their own
needs. These were the things they talked about in their class-

326

THE JiEW JiEGRO

rooms. These were the problems they figured out and then
he talked of conditions as they had just left them at home. He
went out to visit their parents. He went into their homes, into
their churches, into their school-houses 5 having found the
better way of life himself he carried his vision to his people,
inspiring them to have things better for themselves and for
their children and to win those things by their own industry
and worth.

These two institutions have thus become vastly more than
the conventional schools. They have their class-room work as
do others, they study books, they write essays and deliver
orations, but there is a character and a quality to it all that is
unique. That is to say, that was unique, for the idea has spread
abroad, and though Hampton and Tuskegee are unique exem¬
plars of this larger conception and interpretation of education,
yet the idea which they have developed has been appropriated
by others. Not only those that style themselves industrial
schools, but colleges also are grasping the importance of making
their instruction touch life beyond the college walls, thus
making their institutions centers of inspiration and elevation
for that larger clientele which includes the households from
which the students come and communities to which they go for
service.

The influence of this gospel of larger and better living has
not been without its effect upon the Negro race as a whole.
These institutions have maintained specific agencies for reach¬
ing out into the body of the Negro race — farmers5 conferences,
educational tours, extension departments in all of their rami¬
fications, are an essential part of the work of Hampton and
Tuskegee. While the boys and girls were being taught in the
class-rooms, the fathers and mothers were being reached in
the field and in the home; education was carried to them in
simple direct terms made plain by demonstrations, with wit¬
nesses to testify how the plan had worked with them. The
effect was as inspiring as a revival.

Booker Washington made a religion out of life for his
people and few indeed were those who heard one of his talks
who came away without getting this kind of religion. Every-

THE C^EW SCENE 327

where in the South are to be found evidences of its influence.
Negroes have been buying land for a generation till to-day
about one-fourth of them own their homes. This is probably
not true so largely of any other racial group in America.
School facilities have been improved by leaps and bounds,
because these institutions have inspired Negroes to undertake
the solution of their own educational problems, building their
own schools if necessary, supplementing directly out of their
own pockets the salaries provided by the state and adding to
the school term on their own initiative if the authorized school
term was not long enough.

This impulse was extended even to business. A generation
ago Negroes were the consumers, other races were the pro¬
ducers and distributors. The idea was set afloat that Negroes
could profit by catering to the needs of their own people, that
such profit would operate to create larger opportunities for
their own race with a corresponding benefit both to the pro¬
prietor and to his patrons. To-day Negroes are found in all
lines of business with many outstanding examples of success,
as well as their own share of failures. In one of the Founder’s
Day addresses at Tuskegee Institute, a prominent member of
his own race said that Booker Washington had “changed a
crying race into a trying race.” This phrase epitomizes the
idea behind Hampton and Tuskegee. General Armstrong gave
to the Negro race its first lessons in this sort of self-reliance.
Booker Washington inspired the whole race with his confidence
which is now being felt in the rapid strides with which the race
is advancing.

For a time the South was hesitant as to the effect of this
new gospel on the Negro. It welcomed the idea of teaching
the Negro to work if that was what was meant by the “dignity
of labor” — but for a time there was some apprehension lest
behind this idea there should be a subtle force inspiring Negroes
to rebel against unsatisfactory conditions and to resist the domi¬
nation of the Anglo-Saxon who was in control of economic
as well as political life in this section. But the years have
proved these suspicions unfounded. The South has seen a
great change come over the Negro. Education has been found

328 THE V(EW V(EGRO

to be profitable not only for the black man but for the white
man too. To-day the South is more zealous for the improve¬
ment of educational conditions for both races than any other
section of our country. What was heralded as good for the
Negro has been accepted as equally good for white people.
As “industrial education” it was accepted for the solution of
Negro problems: as “vocational education” it has been adopted
by state and federal governments as the solution of economic
and social problems for both races. On this point Dr. Wash¬
ington very early found a platform where both races could
stand side by side with respect for themselves and for each
other. Almost in spite of himself he became through this
means a messenger of good will to both races and to both

sections.

Through Hampton Institute large-minded men and women
of the North expressed their interest in the Negro. Through
Tuskegee Institute forward-looking men and women of the
South found a way for renewing contacts with the Negro race.
When Hollis Burke Frissell appeared on the scene at Hamp¬
ton, the time was ripe for these three elements to join hands in
inaugurating a new program for race relations in the South.
To-day we hear much talk of inter-racial co-operation, but it
began years ago. What was then the faith of a few has become
the conviction of many. The confidence sown then is bringing
forth a harvest of good-will now, and the field is being en¬
larged continually.

A great many unexpected results came out of the war. One
of the earliest and most encouraging was the opening up of
industrial opportunities for the Negro in the North. Then
came the migration. In the wake of this movement many
problems developed in both the North and the South. It be¬
came necessary to reconstruct the agricultural program of
the South. The North was introduced to a new social pro¬
gram. A new bond of sympathy has been established between
the two sections. What was considered a sectional problem
has become a national problem. What has been considered a
racial problem is coming more and more to be recognized as a
purely human problem. These problems, however, are not as

THE JiEW SCENE 329

acute as they might have been because of the influence of Hamp¬
ton and Tuskegee and of the other institutions like Howard,
Virginia Union, Atlanta, Fisk, Morehouse, Clark and Biddle
which have been exerting the same influence on the Negro race.

Negroes who went North were not all raw, unskilled labor¬
ers. Out of the industrial schools had come Negroes trained
for the requirements of industry — blacksmiths, carpenters,
brickmasons, plumbers, steam-fitters, auto-mechanics. When
the opportunity came these men were ready for the test to
which they were to be subjected. Though the great bulk of
those who migrated had had no specific training in these lines,
there were enough trained at Tuskegee and Hampton, and
other industrial schools as well as in industrial plants in the
South to make it feasible for Northern manufacturers to experi¬
ment with Negro mechanics. In all the industrial centers of the
North and South graduates of these schools can be found, and
it is a source of satisfaction that they have so far justified the
experiment as to remove practically all doubt as to their avail¬
ability for skilled work in whatever lines are open to them.

These laborers did not go alone, however, so broad was the
current of migration that it carried along with it professional
men and leaders in business and other lines of activity, trained
in the schools of the South. Lawyers, doctors, dentists found
it desirable to change their location to the new centers to which
their clients had migrated. Even ministers, finding their con¬
gregations depleted by the movement, found it possible in not
a few instances to establish churches in the North whose mem¬
berships were in a large measure composed of their former
parishioners in the South.

The initial effect of this on the North was to create a hous-
ing problem. Residential sections inhabited formerly by whites
were invaded by Negroes under the pressure of expanding
population. One reaction to this was the riots in Washington,
Chicago and Omaha. Not every city, however, witnessed such
violent eruption 5 Springfield, Cleveland, Akron, Detroit, pro¬
ceeded to absorb the influx of Negro population without ap¬
parent friction. This was nowhere better done than in New
York City. Already densely populated, the metropolitan cen-

33o THE CEW E^EGRO

ter proceeded to readjustments that have given it the largest
Negro population of any city in the country and probably the
world. The coming of this excess population presented to the
real estate dealers an opportunity for increased profits of which
they proceeded immediately to take advantage. Whole blocks
of tenements and apartment houses were bought by speculators
and turned over to Negro tenants, the former white occupants
moving farther uptown. By accommodating themselves to
limited quarters, many Negro families found comfortable
residence in well-appointed modern livings, and that, too,
without the annoyance or embarrassment of legal residence

restrictions. t

Harlem is recognized as the Negro section of New York

without any requirement of law. Here Negroes have their
own theaters, their own newspaper establishments, restaurants,
stores, barber shops, offices, and all the other accessories and
necessities of community life. White merchants still accom¬
modate the bulk of the trade, and it is interesting to observe
that groceries and meat markets have made it a point to cater
to the tastes and habits that the Negro population have brought
from the South. Restaurants serve those dishes to which
Negroes have become accustomed, and the markets put in
large supplies of these staple products, many of them specially

imported from the Southern States.

In New York, as in other cities, there was no great difficulty
for the newcomer to find work, but in this city a large propor¬
tion of these migrants went into personal service, whereas in
other cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, _ Detroit, Youngstown,
employment was found in the industries such as steel mil s,
automobile factories, and in Chicago the packing plants.

The important thing to observe in all this is that contrary to
predictions and many expectations the Negro has found a real
place for himself in the North, and has been able with sur¬
prising facility to adapt himself to the new conditions. In
truth, it is a matter of pride to Negroes themselves to take on
the manners and follow the customs that are characteristic of
the North. It is surprising, also, to note the cordial an
genuinely sympathetic attitude taken towards these newcomers

THE O^EW SCENE 331

by the older residents, colored and white, not the welfare
workers merely, but many of the leading citizens. Newcomers
are not infrequently carefully admonished by those who have
preceded them as to their dress, manners and habits of speech
lest they be ridiculed as having recently come from some
Southern plantation.

Much of the easy solution of the housing problem in North¬
ern cities, notably in Harlem, is due to the enterprise of Negro
real estate men who have taken the initiative in finding homes
for their people. In one city, Springfield, Massachusetts, it is
a church that has taken the lead in solving this problem. In

many places the Urban League, with other welfare movements,
has taken the lead.

New lines of business have opened up with Negro proprie¬
tors where formerly no such business existed. It has very
often been a surprise to Northern Negroes to witness the
energy with which their brethren from the South have taken
the leadership in community enterprise.

In the majority of cases the migrants have been quick to
take advantage of the improved educational facilities of the
North, and have sometimes precipitated the question of segre¬
gated schools, itself a tribute to the Negroes eager desire for
education. In time this must raise the question of an educa¬
tional program which will enable the Negro youth to pre¬
pare themselves in advance for these new places in industry
that are being opened to them. So long as the trade unions
exclude Negroes from the opportunities of apprenticeship, it
will be necessary for Negro youth to look elsewhere for their
training. Some of these are already returning South to the
industrial schools there, but these schools find it impossible
even now to adequately accommodate their local applicants.

The factor in all this is the leadership of Negro men and
women who have received their training in most cases in schools
in the South, such as Hampton, Tuskegee, Howard, Fisk,
Atlanta, Morehouse, Wiley 5 these will be found in the pro¬
fessions, in business, in social work, helping their people to take
advantage of new opportunities and adjust themselves to new
and sometimes hostile conditions.

332 THE V^EW U^EGRO !

These are but some of the indications that the leaven of
Hampton and Tuskegee is working with increased force
throughout the Negro race. It is a matter of common observa¬
tion within the race that men and women who have been
trained in these schools enter into community life with a zeal
and enthusiasm which are characteristic. They ally themselves
with the churches, literary societies, welfare movements, fra¬
ternal organizations and other activities that have for their
object the improvement of the Negro race. They are demon¬
strating that Negroes can succeed where others have succeeded,
that Negroes are capable of the same development which other
races have manifested when given the same opportunity. In
the pursuit of these aims they are developing a race conscious-
ness — a pride, that is really inspiring. For the good name of
their people they want to prove themselves worthy of every
opportunity that is open to them and have every privilege that
is their due as American citizens, and in proportion as they
prove themselves capable they win the confidence and respect ,
of the people of both races, and are counted as an asset to the i
industry, the organization and community with which they
are identified. After all, the strongest recommendation that
Hampton and Tuskegee have is the character and service of >
the men and women whom they have trained for the leadership .
of their people. It not infrequently happens, that men and
women have caught this same spirit and outlook in other schools

_ for there are other schools doing the same thing for their

students — it generally happens that there is a most happy and :
effective co-operation between the men and women from all j
these schools for the highest development of their communi¬
ties.

DURHAM : CAPITAL OF THE BLACK
! MIDDLE CLASS

E. Franklin Frazier

Durham offers none of the color and creative life we find
among Negroes in New York City. It is a city of fine homes,

| exquisite churches, and middle class respectability. It is not
the place where men write and dream ; but a place where black
men calculate and work. No longer can men say that the
Negro is lazy and shiftless and a consumer. He has gone to

work. He is a producer. He is respectable. He has a middle
class.

I Many who have been interested in the Negro’s progress,
and especially his critics, have bemoaned the fact that the Negro
has had no middle class. Negro society has been divided
chiefly into the professional and the working classes. The
working class has not consisted of skilled artisans but unskilled
laborers and domestic servants. While the professional class
has imitated many of the traits of the white middle class, they
have regarded themselves as essentially an aristocracy. The
working classes have been execrated by both white and colored
or their love of pleasure. So in neither of these classes have
the Negroes developed a middle class economic outlook. We
can discount the fanciful schemes for getting rich and the
activities of the swindler. Even small retail stores operated
y Negroes are conspicuously absent from Negro communities.
But the Negro is at last developing a middle class, and its main
center is in Durham. As we read the lives of the men in
| urham who have established the enterprises there, we find
stories parallelling the most amazing accounts of the building
of American fortunes. We find them beginning their careers
without much formal education and practising the old-fash^
lioned virtues of the old middle class. Their lives are as free
from the Negro’s native love of leisure and enjoyment of life

333

334 THE 2(EW J^EGRO

as Franklin’s life. Hard work was their rule. We see them
assuming the role of promoter and organizer. And finally we
find them in the role of the modern business man. Conse¬
quently, we have in Durham to-day the outstanding group of
colored capitalists who have entered the second generation of
business enterprise. This is significant, as few Negro enter¬
prises have survived the personal direction and energy of the
founders. Moreover, these men have mastered the technique
of modern business and acquired the spirit of modern enter¬
prise.

When we trace the history of this development we must
begin with the late John Merrick. He was born a slave in
1859 in Sampson County, North Carolina. His early years
were spent at work in a brickyard in Chapel Hill. He learned
to read and write from the Bible. As he was compelled to
support his mother and younger brother, he could not attend
school. Although he could not share in the educational advan¬
tages which Northern missionaries were offering Negroes dur¬
ing the Reconstruction, he helped as a brickmason to build one
of their leading schools, Shaw University in Raleigh. Next we 1
find Mr. Merrick a bootblack and later a barber in the same
shop. Full of energy and enterprise, he set out with his wife
to work in a new barber shop in Durham, where he was to make
his distinguished career. It is a significant fact that Mr. Mer¬
rick came to Durham at the time when white men were begin¬
ning to devote themselves to the exploitation of the wealth
of the South. Of more fundamental influence upon them was
the contact with the leading business men such as the Dukes,
who were his customers. His biographer, T. McCants Andrews,
remarks: “Mr. Merrick’s contact with the leading business men
of Durham had as much to do with his success as his own per¬
sonal gifts.” We soon find Mr. Merrick the sole proprietor of
the barber shop in which he worked and the owner of his home.
The story of the organization and the development of the Royal
Knights of King David shows that Mr. Merrick possessed the
organizing ability and the spirit of the promoter. When an
itinerant Baptist preacher from Georgia offered to sell the rit¬
ualistic rights to a group of Durham Negroes, Mr. Merrick was

THE V(EW SCENE 335

chief among those to buy the entire order. Nor was he satisfied
with the usual fraternal features, for he soon made it known
that he would not have anything to do with it if it were not a
business proposition. Merrick declared: “Well, I ain’t no
society man.” By shrewd advertisement of the payment of
death dues the order grew. A few years later, Mr. William
i Pearson, one of the leading men in the present Durham group,
became the guiding spirit in the order. When he took charge,
the collections amounted to fourteen dollars a month. Under
his skill and management, the order, which is essentially an
insurance company, has grown until it numbers 21,000 mem¬
bers in eight states.

We come now to the greatest achievement of the Durham
group and no doubt the greatest monument to Negroes’ busi¬
ness enterprise in America — the. North Carolina Mutual Life
Insurance Company. The first organization of this company in
1898 consisted of seven men who paid in fifty dollars each to
meet immediate expenses. At first the enterprise did not flour¬
ish and some became discouraged. It was then that Mr. Mer-
; rick and Dr . Moore bought in the interests of the others and,
with the present president, Mr. Spaulding, brought the com¬
pany to its present development. Space in Dr. Moore’s office
was rented for the work of the company, which was then known
as the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association. Mr.
Merrick took charge of the financial direction ; Dr. Moore
became medical examiner j and Mr. Spaulding, promoter. The
* payment of the first death claim of forty dollars caused such a
crisis that the promoters had to call a meeting and pay part of
the sum from their own pockets. This was heralded abroad.
By 1905 it was able to pay salaries after erecting an $8,000
office building in 1 904. At this time another man, Mr. John
Avery, became associated with the company. He is another
example of those Americans who have begun their careers as
poor farm boys and in a generation found themselves in mana¬
gerial chairs of million dollar enterprises. Mr. Avery is now
the secretary of this company, having an annual income of over
two million dollars.

The growth of the company has been continuous and well

336 THE ViEW D^EGRO

founded. It has grown from a collection of $840 in 1899
to over $5,000 a day. It is now operating in eleven states
and the District of Columbia, and has over i,500 employees.
In 1914 the company began issuing ordinary policies based
upon the American Experience Table of Mortality. In 1919
it became mutualized. To-day it has $42,000,000 of insurance
in force and assets amounting to over $2,000,000. The com¬
pany’s office building is one of the ornaments of Durham s
business district. In this building there is another enterprise
of this group — the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, established
in 1908. It handles the bulk of the business of the insurance
company and has deposits amounting to $612,700.. Its re¬
sources amount to $800,000. In 1920 this institution saved
more than 500 homes and farms being bought by Negroes by
lending the purchasers over $200,000. A branch has been
established in Raleigh.

True to the spirit and habits of modern business men, these
men have undertaken other forms of enterprises wherever an
opportunity to promote some form of productive enterprise
appeared. We can count among their projects two drug stores
and a real estate firm. A venture into industrial exploitation
was the only unsuccessful enterprise of these men. The textile
mill which they organized in 1914 was discontinued a year
later, fortunately, without loss, because of the lack of technical
assistance and the European war. One of the more recent
undertakings of this group is the Bankers Fire Insurance Com¬
pany, which was organized in 1920. This company is now
operating in five states and the District of Columbia. After
the merger with another concern, this company had over $200,-
000 in paid in capital. Its strength was demonstrated in 1922
when it paid out $38,000 in the fire in New Bern. The assets

of this company amount to $350,000.

The latest project to locate in this prolific center of .Negro
enterprise is the National Negro Finance Corporation with Dr.
Moton as president and Mr. C. C. Spaulding as vice-president.
Its purpose is to furnish working capital for individuals, firms
and corporations. This corporation hopes by this means to
foster the financial and commercial development of Negroes.

THE ViEW SCENE 337

It is co-operating with the National Negro Business League.
As this enterprise was only begun in 1924, it is too soon to
estimate its contribution to the development of the middle
class economic outlook among Negroes, but it promises a new
era in the development of Negro business enterprise.

In interpreting the advent of the new middle class in Negro
life, it will be interesting to cast a glance at the educational
influences responsible. The men responsible for this phenom¬
enal development in Negro business did not in the majority of
instances come up from the uneducated ranks. In the case of
Mr. Merrick, we have, it is true, the same story of most Ameri¬
cans who without education have built fortunes in the last
century. But Mr. Spaulding was more fortunate. He had a
high school education. Probably a more important part of his
education for business was his experience as manager of a
grocery store. Many have brought the charge against the
so-called higher education that it was impractical and did not
prepare Negroes for life, for practical success. Yet the pro¬
moters of these concerns were for the most part men who had
received education in the schools of higher education. Avery,
Pearson, and Moore were all from such schools. A factor that
must not be overlooked in considering the preparation of the
Negro for economic activities, is that Negroes scarcely ever
' have an opportunity for apprenticeship in business concerns,
which is the most valuable form of business education. Con¬
sequently it was necessary for men with a larger education who
understood the mechanism of credit to establish such businesses
as we are considering. They had acquired the true spirit of
the modern promoter and a knowledge of his methods. Young
Negroes leaving colleges to-day who would ordinarily enter
some business institution and work their way up, go to schools
to acquire business technique. When a young Negro says he
is going into business, he is usually one who has acquired a
college education and intends after a business course to get a
managerial position. He has little faith in the acquisition of
wealth by thrift and the sweat of his brow. Thus we see the
colored middle class growing not out of shopkeepers, < but
from men who have a larger outlook.

338 THE O^EW C^EGRO

With the establishment of a number of Negro enterprises,
however, it will be possible for some to find education by
apprenticeship. Even here most of them are men of broad
education such as will give them an appreciation and under¬
standing of the business. The Durham businesses have begun
their second generation. Mr. Edward Merrick, the son of the
most distinguished member of the pioneer group, is the treas¬
urer of the insurance company. He came to the work with a
good education and learned the business from the bottom. He
entered the business just as the second generation in white
businesses enter their fathers’ business. This younger genera¬
tion is building upon the firm foundation of the work of the
first generation. They are not dreamers attempting to create
Negro business out of nothing. It is well to mention here the
recent failure in Atlanta. The attempt to establish big busi¬
ness there began in an enterprise — the Standard Life — that
was sound in principle. The failure came when the promoters
resorted to the practices of the magician and the schemes of
speculators. Although the Atlanta group, especially the young
men, did not have the business experience of the Durham
group, the failure was not due to the young men with tech¬
nical training but to the older men.

These younger men are truly modern business men. They
have adopted the technique of modern business and are satu¬
rated with the psychology of the capitalist class. They wonc
hard, not because of necessity, but to expand their businesses
and invade new fields. They have the same outlook on life as
the middle class everywhere. They support the same theories
of government and morality. They have little sympathy with
waste of time. Their pleasures are the pleasures of the tired
business man who does not know how to enjoy life. They are
distinguished laymen in the churches. They endow chanties
and schools. IVliddle class respectability is their ideal. Above
all they want progress. Like modern business men who have
one economy for business and one for private consumption,
they maintain fine homes and expensive cars. They spend
their vacations in the same manner as the whites at Newport.

In this account of the rise of the black middle class, we have

the scene 339

said nothing of its relation to the white world. The founders
of these enterprises grew up with the exploitation of the New
South. Had it not been for the bar of color some of them
would have been counted among the most conspicuous of the
new industrial and commercial classes in the South. They
were restricted in the field of their activities. Yet they are as
typical of the New South as any white business man. Their
outlook is the same. John Merrick in a letter commenting
on the Wilmington riots enunciated views on government held
by the middle class everywhere. Have the men of the white
South recognized these brothers under the skin? Yes. They
show respect for their achievements. They have been friendly
to their enterprises. This is perhaps due to two causes: namely,
the lack to a large extent of the savage race prejudice of the
lower South and the absence of serious competition. White
men have recognized these men as the supporters of property
rights. They know these men would no more vote for Debs
than they. Yet, there are still Jim Crow cars in North Caro¬
lina, and the Negro is denied civil and political rights.

Durham is promise of a transformed Negro. The Negro
has been a strange mixture of the peasant and the gentleman in
his outlook on life. Because of the Negro’s love of leisure and
sensuous enjoyment, men have called him lazy and immoral.
Because he lacks calculation, white folk have called him shift¬
less. But two hundred and fifty years of enforced labor, with
no incentive in its just rewards, more than any inherent traits,
explain why the Negro has for so long been concerned chiefly
with consumption rather than production. Peasant virtues are
middle-class faults. And so are the gentleman’s j and the
Negro has come by these in curious but inevitable ways. Some
he has absorbed from the master-class of the South that he
served and knew so intimately ; the rest has come from his
artistic nature. The drab way of life that seeks ever to work
and pile up wealth and finds its enjoyment in spasmodic intox¬
ications of pleasure has not been the way of the Negro. His
desire for color and form has been the cause of mockery.
His desire to work for only enough to supply his wants is only
the ideal that has motivated economic activities in former ages.

34o THE C^EW U^EGRO

Moreover, love of leisure and interest in consumption are
aristocratic virtues. But to-day, the Negro has his middle class,
and with it his middle-class psychology. More and more cer¬
tain elements of the race are absorbing the typical spirit and
push of modern industrialism in America; in the composite
portrait of the New Negro must be put the sharp and forceful
features of the Negro man of business. Through his effort and
success, the Negro is becoming an integral part of the business
life of America, and is sharing particularly in the economic
development of the New South, which is perhaps the out¬
standing economic consequence of the World War on America.

k k

GIFT OF THE BLACK TROPICS

W. A. Domingo

Almost unobserved, America plays her usual role in the
meeting, mixing and welding of the colored peoples of the
earth. A dusky tribe of destiny seekers, these brown and black
and yellow folk, eyes filled with visions of an alien heritage —
palm-fringed seashores, murmuring streams, luxuriant hills
and vales — have made an epical march from the far corners
of the earth to the Port of New York and America. They
bring the gift of the black tropics to America and to their
kinsmen. With them come vestiges of a quaint folk life, other
social traditions, and as for the first time in their lives, colored
people of Spanish, French, Dutch, Arabian, Danish, Portu¬
guese, British and native African ancestry meet and move
together, there comes into Negro life the stir and leavening
that is uniquely American. Despite his inconsiderable num¬
bers, the black foreigner is a considerable factor and figure.
It is not merely his picturesqueness that he brings, his lean,
sun-burnt features, quaint manners and speech, his tropical
incongruities, these as with all folkways rub off in less than a
generation — it is his spirit that counts and has counted in the
interplay of his life with the native population.

According to the census for 1920 there were in the United
States 73,803 foreign-born Negroes ; of that number 36,613,
or approximately 50 per cent, lived in New York City, 28,184
of them in the Borough of Manhattan. They formed slightly
less than 20 per cent of the total Negro population of New
York.

Here they have their first contact with each other, with large
numbers of American Negroes, and with the American brand of
race prejudice. Divided by tradition, culture, historical back¬
ground and group perspective, these diverse peoples are grad¬
ually hammered into a loose unit by the impersonal force of

341

342

THE E^EW WiEGRO

congested residential segregation. Unlike others of the for¬
eign-born, black immigrants find it impossible to segregate
themselves into colonies 5 too dark of complexion to pose as
Cubans or some other Negroid but alien-tongued foreigners,
they are inevitably swallowed up in black Harlem. Their
situation requires an adjustment unlike that of any other
class of the immigrant population; and but for the assistance
of their kinsfolk they would be capsized almost on the very
shores of their haven.

From 1920 to 1923 the foreign-born Negro population of
the United States was increased nearly 40 per cent through the
entry of 30,849 Africans (black). In 1921 the high-water
mark of 9,873 was registered. This increase was not perma¬
nent, for in 1923 there was an exit of 1,525 against an entry
of 7,554. If the 20 per cent that left that year is an index
of the proportion leaving annually, it is safe to estimate a
net increase of about 24,000 between 1920 and 1923. If the
newcomers are distributed throughout the country in the same
proportion as their predecessors, the present foreign-born
Negro population of Harlem is about 35,000. These people
are, therefore, a formidable minority whose presence cannot be
ignored or discounted. It is this large body of foreign-born
who contribute those qualities that make New York so unlike
Pittsburgh, Washington, Chicago and other cities with large
aggregations of American Negroes.

The largest number come from the British West Indies

and are attracted to America mainly by economic reasons:
though considerable numbers of the younger generation come
for the purposes of education. The next largest group consists
of Spanish-speaking Negroes from Latin America. Distinct
because of their language, and sufficiently numerous to main¬
tain themselves as a cultural unit, the Spanish element has but
little contact with the English-speaking majority. For the
most part they keep to themselves and follow in the main
certain definite occupational lines. A smaller group, French-
speaking, have emigrated from Haiti and the French West
Indies. There are also a few Africans, a batch of voluntary
pilgrims over the old track of the slave-traders.

From the Tropic Isles

THE O^EW SCENE 343

Among the English-speaking West Indian population of
Harlem are some 8,000 natives of the American Virgin
Islands. A considerable part of these people were forced to
migrate to the mainland as a consequence of the operation of
the Volstead Act which destroyed the lucrative rum industry
and helped to reduce the number of foreign vessels that used
to call at the former free port of Charlotte Amelia for various
stores. Despite their long Danish connection these people are
culturally and linguistically English, rather than Danish. Un¬
like the British Negroes in New York, the Virgin Islanders
. take an intelligent and aggressive interest in the affairs of their
former home, and are organized to co-operate with their broth¬
ers there who are valiantly struggling to substitute civil govern¬
ment for the present naval administration of the islands.

To the average American Negro, all English-speaking black
foreigners are West Indians, and by that is usually meant
British subjects. There is a general assumption that there is
everything in common among West Indians, though nothing
can be further from the truth. West Indians regard them¬
selves as Antiguans or Jamaicans as the case might be, and a
glance at the map will quickly reveal the physical obstacles
that militate against homogeneity of population 5 separations
of many sorts, geographical, political and cultural tend every¬
where to make and crystallize local characteristics.

This undiscriminating attitude on the part of native Negroes,

* as well as the friction generated from contact between the two
groups, has created an artificial and defensive unity among the
islanders which reveals itself in an instinctive closing of their
i ranks when attacked by outsiders j but among themselves or-
I gamzation along insular lines is the general rule. Their social
' grouping, however, does not follow insular precedents. Social
gradation is determined in the islands by family connections,

3 education, wealth and position. As each island is a complete
society in itself, Negroes occupy from the lowliest to the most
exalted positions. The barrier separating the colored aristo-
ji crat from the laboring class of the same color is as difficult
to surmount as a similar barrier between Englishmen. Most
of the islanders in New York are from the middle, artisan and

344 ?HE KZW O^EGRO

laboring classes. Arriving in a country whose every influence
is calculated to democratize their race and destroy the distinc¬
tions they had been accustomed to, even those West Indians
whose stations in life have been of the lowest soon lose what¬
ever servility they brought with them. In its place they sub¬
stitute all of the self-assertiveness of the classes they formerly
paid deference to.

West Indians have been coming to the United States for over
a century. The part they have played in Negro progress is
conceded to be important. As early as 1827 a Jamaican, John
Brown Russwurm, one of the founders of Liberia, was the
first colored man to be graduated from an American college
and to publish a newspaper in this country ; sixteen years later
his fellow countryman, Peter Ogden, organized in New York
City the first Odd-Fellows Lodge for Negroes. Prior to the
Civil War, West Indian contribution to American Negro life
was so great that Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, in his Souls of Bluck
Folk , credits them with main responsibility for the manhood
program presented by the race in the early decades of the
last century. Indicative of their tendency to blaze new paths
is the achievement of John W. A. Shaw of Antigua who, in the
early ?90?s of the last century, passed the civil service tests and
became deputy commissioner of taxes for the County of
Queens.

It is probably not realized, indeed, to what extent West
Indian Negroes have contributed to the wealth, power and
prestige of the United States. Major-General Goethals, chief
engineer and builder of the Panama Canal, has testified in
glowing language to the fact that when all other labor was
tried and failed it was the black men of the Caribbean whose
intelligence, skill, muscle and endurance made the union of
the Pacific and the Atlantic a reality.

Coming to the United States from countries in which they
had experienced no legalized social or occupational disabilities,
West Indians very naturally have found it difficult to adapt
themselves to the tasks that are, by custom, reserved for Ne¬
groes in the North. Skilled at various trades and having a

a — •

contempt for body service and menial work, many of the 1m-

THE ViEW SCENE 345

migrants apply for positions that the average American Negro
has been schooled to regard as restricted to white men only,
with the result that through their persistence and doggedness
in fighting white labor, West Indians have in many cases been
pioneers and shock troops to open a way for Negroes into new
fields of employment.

This freedom from spiritual inertia characterizes the women
no less than the men, for it is largely through them that the
occupational field has been broadened for colored women in
New York. By their determination, sometimes reinforced by
a dexterous use of their hatpins, these women have made it
possible for members of their race to enter the needle trades
freely.

It is safe to say that West Indian representation in the skilled
trades is relatively large ; this is also true of the professions,
especially medicine and dentistry. Like the Jew, they are
forever launching out in business, and such retail businesses
as are in the hands of Negroes in Harlem are largely in the
control of the foreign-born. While American Negroes pre¬
dominate in forms of business like barber shops and pool rooms
in which there is no competition from white men, West In¬
dians turn their efforts almost invariably to fields like grocery
stores, tailor shops, jewelry stores and fruit vending in which
they meet the fiercest kind of competition. In some of these
fields they are the pioneers or the only surviving competitors
of white business concerns. In more ambitious business enter¬
prises like real estate and insurance they are relatively numer¬
ous. The only Casino and moving picture theatre operated by
Negroes in Harlem is in the hands of a native of one of the
small islands. On Seventh Avenue a West Indian woman
conducts a millinery store that would be a credit to Fifth
Avenue.

The analogy between the West Indian and the Jew may be
carried farther $ they are both ambitious, eager for education,
willing to engage in business, argumentative, aggressive and
possessed of great proselytizing zeal for any cause they espouse.
West Indians are great contenders for their rights and because
of their respect for law are inclined to be litigious. In addition,

346 THE 2(EW J(EGRO

they are, as a whole, home-loving, hard-working and frugal.
Like their English exemplars they are fond of sport, lack a
sense of humor (yet the greatest black comedian of America,
Bert Williams, was from the Bahamas) and are very serious
and intense in their attitude toward life. They save their
earnings and are mindful of their folk in the homeland, as the
volume of business of the Money Order and Postal Savings
Departments of College Station Post Office will attest.

Ten years ago it was possible to distinguish the West Indian
in Harlem, especially during the summer months. Accustomed
to wearing cool, light-colored garments in the tropics, he
would stroll along Lenox Avenue on a hot day resplendent in
white shoes and flannel pants, the butt of many a jest from
his American brothers who, to-day, have adopted the styles
that they formerly derided. This trait of non-conformity
manifested by the foreign-born has irritated American Negroes,
who resent the implied self-sufficiency, and as a result there
is a considerable amount of prejudice against West Indians.
It is claimed that they are proud and arrogant ; that they think
themselves superior to the natives. And although educated
Negroes of New York are loudest in publicly decrying the
hostility between the two groups, it is nevertheless true that
feelings against West Indians is strongest among members of
that class. This is explainable on the ground of professional
jealousy and competition for leadership. As the islanders press
forward and upward they meet the same kind of opposition
from the native Negro that the Jew and other ambitious white
aliens receive from white Americans. Naturalized West In¬
dians have found from experience that American Negroes are
reluctant to concede them the right to political leadership even
when qualified intellectually. Unlike their American brothers,
the islanders are free from those traditions that bind them to
any party and, as a consequence, are independent to the point
of being radical. Indeed, it is they who largely compose the
few political and economic radicals in Harlem ; without them
the genuinely radical movement among New York Negroes
would be unworthy of attention.

There is a diametrical difference between American and

THE (EW SCENE 347

West Indian Negroes in their worship. While large sections
of the former are inclined to indulge in displays of emotion¬
alism that border on hysteria, the latter, in their Wesleyan
Methodist and Baptist churches maintain in the face of the
assumption that people from the tropics are necessarily emo¬
tional, all the punctilious emotional restraint characteristic of
their English background. In religious radicalism the foreign-
born are again pioneers and propagandists. The only modernist
church among the thousands of Negroes in New York (and
perhaps the country) is led by a West Indian, Rev. E. Ethelred
Brown, an ordained Unitarian minister, and is largely sup¬
ported by his fellow islanders.

In facing the problem of race prejudice, foreign-born Ne¬
groes, and West Indians in particular, are forced to undergo
considerable adjustment. Forming a racial majority in their
own countries and not being accustomed to discrimination ex¬
pressly felt as racial, they rebel against the “color line” as
they find it in America. For while color and caste lines tend
to converge in the islands, it is nevertheless true that because
of the ratio of population, historical background and traditions
of rebellions before and since their emancipation, West Indians
of color do not have their activities, social, occupational and
otherwise, determined by their race. Color plays a part but
it is not the prime determinant of advancement ; hence, the
deep feeling of resentment when the “color line,” legal or
customary, is met and found to be a barrier to individual
progress. For this reason the West Indian has thrown him¬
self whole-heartedly into the fight against lynching, discrimi¬
nation and the other disabilities from which Negroes in
America suffer.

It must be remembered that the foreign-born black men
and women, more so even than other groups of immigrants, are
the hardiest and most venturesome of their folk. They were
dissatisfied at home, and it is to be expected that they would
not be altogether satisfied with limitation of opportunity here
when they have staked so much to gain enlargement of oppor¬
tunity. They do not suffer from the local anesthesia of custom

348 THE EiEW EiEGRO

and pride which makes otherwise intolerable situations bearable
for the home-staying majorities.

Just as the West Indian has been a sort of leaven in the
American loaf, so the American Negro is beginning to play
a reciprocal role in the life of the foreign Negro communities,
as for instance, the recent championing of the rights of Haiti
and Liberia and the Virgin Islands, as well as the growing
resentment at the treatment of natives in the African colonial
dependencies. This world-wide reaction of the darker races to
their common as well as local grievances is one of the most
significant facts of recent development. Exchange of views
and sympathy, extension and co-operation of race organizations
beyond American boundaries, principally in terms of economic
and educational projects, but also to a limited extent in political
affairs, are bound to develop on a considerable scale in the near
future. Formerly, ties have been almost solely through the
medium of church missionary enterprises.

It has been asserted that the movement headed by the most-
advertised of all West Indians, Marcus Garvey, absentee “pres¬
ident” of the continent of Africa, represents the attempt of
West Indian peasants to solve the American race problem.
This is no more true than it would be to say that the editorial
attitude of The Crisis during the war reflected the spirit of
American Negroes respecting their grievances or that the late
Booker T. Washington successfully delimited the educational
aspirations of his people. The support given Garvey by a cer¬
tain type of his countrymen is partly explained by their group
reaction to attacks made upon him because of his nationality.
On the other hand, the earliest and most persistent exposures
of Garvey’s multitudinous schemes were initiated by West In¬
dians in New York like Cyril Briggs and the writer.

Prejudice against West Indians is in direct ratio to their
number j hence its strength in New York where they are heavily
concentrated. It is not unlike the hostility between Englishmen
and Americans of the same racial stock. It is to be expected
that the feeling will always be more or less present between
the immigrant and the native born. However it does not
extend to the children of the two groups, as they are subject to

THE V^EW SCENE 349

the same environment and develop identity of speech and
psychology. Then, too, there has been an appreciable amount
of intermarriage, especially between foreign-born men and
native women. Not to be ignored is the fact that congestion
in Harlem has forced both groups to be less discriminating in
accepting lodgers, thus making for reconciling contacts.

The outstanding contribution of West Indians to American
Negro life is the insistent assertion of their manhood in an
environment that demands too much servility and unprotesting
acquiescence from men of African blood. This unwillingness
to conform and be standardized, to accept tamely an inferior
status and abdicate their humanity, finds an open expression in
the activities of the foreign-born Negro in America.

Their dominant characteristic is that of blazing new paths,
breaking the bonds that would fetter the feet of a virile people
a spirit eloquently expressed in the defiant lines of the
Jamaican poet, Claude McKay:

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back.

THE NEGRO AND THE AMERICAN

TRADITION

THE NEGRO’S AMERICANISM

Melville J. Herskovits

Glimpses of the whirring cycle of life in Harlem leave the
visitor bewildered at its complexity. There is constantly be¬
fore one the tempting invitation to compare and contrast
the life there with that of other communities one has had the
opportunity of observing. Should I not find there, if any¬
where, the anomalous cultural position of the Negro, of which
I had heard so much? Should I not be able to discover there
his ability, of which we are so often told, to produce unique
cultural traits, which might be added to the prevailing white
culture, and, as well, to note his equally well-advertised in¬
ability to grasp the complex civilization of which he constitutes
a part?

And so I went, and what I found was churches and schools,
club houses and lodge meeting-places, the library and the
newspaper offices and the Y. M. C. A. and busy One Hundred
and Thirty-fifth Street and the hospitals and the social service
agencies. I met persons who were lawyers and doctors and
editors and writers, who were chauffeurs and peddlers and
longshoremen and real estate brokers and capitalists, teachers
and nurses and students and waiters and cooks. And all Ne¬
groes. Cabarets and theaters, drug stores and restaurants just
like those everywhere else. And finally, after a time, it oc¬
curred to me that what I was seeing was a community just
like any other American community. The same pattern, only
a different shade!

Where, then, is the “peculiar” community of which I had
heard so much? To what extent, if any, has the Negro genius
developed a culture peculiar to it in America? I did not find
it in the great teeming center of Negro life in Harlem, where,
if anywhere, it should be found. May it not then be true

354 THE D^EW CN^E G R O

that the Negro has become acculturated to the prevailing white
culture and has developed the patterns of culture typical of
American life?

Let us first view the matter historically. In the days after
the liberation of the Negroes from slavery, what was more
natural than that they should strive to maintain, as nearly &s
possible, the standards set up by those whom they had been
taught to look up to as arbiters— the white group? .And we
see, on their part, a strong conscious effort to do just this.
They went into business and tried to make money as their
white fellows did. They already had adopted the white forms
of religious faith and practice, and now they began to borrow
other types of organization. Schools sprang up in which they
might learn, not the language and technique of their African
ancestors, but that of this country, where they lived. The
“respected” members of the community were those who lived
upright lives such as the “respected” whites lived — they paid
their debts, they walked in the paths of sexual morality accord¬
ing to the general pattern of the prevailing Puritanical culture,
and they went to church as was right and proper in every
American town. The matter went so far that they attempted
to alter their hair to conform to the general style, and the for¬
tunes made by those who sold hair-straightening devices and

medicines are a matter of record.

In Harlem we have to-day, essentially, a typical American
community. You may look at the Negroes on the street. As
to dress and deportment, do you find any vast difference be¬
tween them and the whites among whom they carry on their
lives? Notice them as they go about their work— they do
almost all of the things the whites do, and in much the same
way. The popular newspapers in Harlem are not the Negro
papers — there is even no Negro daily — but the city newspapers
which everyone reads. And there is the same gossipy reason
why the Harlemites read their own weeklies as that which
causes the inhabitants of Chelsea, of the Bronx, of Putnam,
Connecticut, or of West Liberty,. Ohio, to read theirs. When
we come to the student groups in Harlem, we find that the
same process occurs — the general culture-pattern has taken

THE C^EGRO *AND AMERICAN TRADITION 355

them horse, foot and artillery. Do the whites organize Greek-
letter fraternities and sororities in colleges, with pearl-studded
pins and “houses”? You will find a number of Negro fra¬
ternities and sororities with just the same kind of insignia and
“houses.” Negro community centres are attached to the more
prosperous churches just as the same sort of institutions are
connected with white churches. And they do the same sort of
things there j you can see swimming and gymnasium classes
and sewing classes and nutrition talks and open forums and all
the rest of it that we all know so well.

When I visit the Business Men’s Association, the difference
between this gathering and that of any Rotary Club is imper¬
ceptible. And on the other end of the economic scale that
equally applies to Negro and white, and which prevails all
over the country, we find the Socialist and labor groups.
True, once in a while an element peculiarly Negro does mani¬
fest itself ; thus I remember vividly the bitter complaints of
one group of motion picture operators at the prejudices which
prevent them from enjoying the benefits of the white union.
And, of course, you will meet with this sort of thing whenever
the stream of Negro life conflicts with the more general pat¬
tern of the “color line.” But even here I noticed that the
form of the organization of these men was that assumed by
their white fellow-workers, and similarly when I attended a
Socialist street-meeting in Harlem, I found that the general
economic motif comes in for much more attention that the
problems which are of interest to the Negro per se.

Perhaps the most striking example of complete acceptance
of the general pattern is in the field of sex relations. I shall
never forget the storm of indignation which I aroused among
a group of Negro men and women with whom I chanced to
be talking on one occasion, when, a propos of the question of
the treatment of the Negro woman in literature, I inadver¬
tently remarked that even if the sexual looseness generally
attributed to her were true, it was nothing of which to be
essentially ashamed, since such a refusal to accept the Puri¬
tanical modes of procedure generally considered right and
proper might contribute a welcome leaven to the convention-

356 THE EiEW R(EGRO

ality of current sex mores. The reaction, prompt and violent,
was such as to show with tremendous clarity the complete ac¬
culturation of these men and women to the accepted standards
of sex behavior. There was not even a shade of doubt but
that sexual rigidity is the ultimate ideal of relations between
men and women, and certainly there was no more indication of
a leaning toward the customs to be found in ancestral Africa
than would be found among a group of whites.

Or, let us consider the position of the Negro intellectuals, the
writers and artists. The proudest boast of the modern young
Negro writer is that he writes of humans, not of Negroes. His
literary ideals are not the African folk-tale and conundrum,
but the vivid expressionistic style of the day he seeks to be
a writer, not a Negro writer. It was this point, indeed, which
was especially stressed at a dinner recently given in New
York City for a group of young Negro writers on the occasion
of the publication of a novel by one of their number. Memoer
after member of the group stated this position as his own —
not Negro as such, but human — another striking example of
the process of acculturation.

The problem then may be presented with greater clarity.
Does not the Negro have a mode of life that is essentially sim
ilar to that of the general community of which he is a part?
Or can it be maintained that he possesses a distinctive, inborn
cultural genius which manifests itself even in America? To
answer this, we must answer an even more basic question : what
is cultural genius? For the Negro came to America endowed,
as all people are endowed, with a culture, which had been
developed by him through long ages in Africa. Was it innate?
Or has it been sloughed off, forgotten, in the generations since

he was brought into our culture?

To understand the problem with which we are presented, it
may be well to consider what this thing, culture, is, and the
extent to which we can say that it falls into patterns. By the
word culture I do not mean the refinements of our particular
civilization which the word has come to connote, but simply
those elements of the environment which are the handiwork
of man himself. Thus, among ourselves, we might consider

THE !?(EGRO zAND AMERICAN TRADITION 357

a spinning machine, or the democratic theory of society, or a
fork, or the alphabet as much a cultural fact as a symphonic
tone-poem, a novel, or an oil painting.

We may best come to an understanding of culture through
a consideration of some of the phases of primitive life, where
the forces at work are not overshadowed by the great impon¬
derable fact of dense masses of population. As we look over
the world, we see that there is no group of men, however
simply they may live their lives, without the thing we call
culture. And, what is more important, the culture thev pos¬
sess as the result of their own historical background — is an
adult affair, developed through long centuries of trial and
error, and something constantly changing. Man, it has been
said, is a culture-building animal. And he is nowhere without
the particular culture which his group have built. It is true
that the kinds of culture which he builds are bewilderingly
different — to compare the civilization of the Eskimo, the Aus¬
tralian, the Chinese, the African, and of ourselves leaves the
student with a keener sense of their differences, both as to
form and complexity, rather than with any feeling of resem¬
blances among them. But one thing they do have in common:
the cultures, when viewed from the outside, are stable. In
their main elements they go along much as they always have
gone, unless some great historical accident (like the discovery
of the steam engine in our culture or the intrusion of the West¬
ern culture on that of the Japanese or the transplanting of
Negro slaves from Africa to America) occurs to upset the trend
and to direct the development of the culture along new paths.
To the persons within the cultures, however, they seem even
more than just stable. They seem fixed, rigid, all-enduring —
indeed, they are so taken for granted that, until comparatively
recent times, they were never studied at all.

But what is it that makes cultures different? There are
those, of course, who will maintain that it is the racial factor.
They will say that the bewildering differences between the
cultures of the Englishman, the Chinaman, the Bantu and
the Maya, for example, are the result of differences in innate
racial endowment, and that every race has evolved a culture

358 THE U^EW TiEGRO

peculiarly fitted to it. All this sounds very convincing until
one tries to define the term “race.” Certain anthropologists
are trying, even now, to discover criteria which will scientifically
define the term “Negro.” One of the most distinguished of
these, Professor T. Wingate Todd, has been working steadily
for some years in the attempt, and the net results are certain
hypotheses which he himself calls tentative. The efforts of
numerous psychological testers to establish racial norms for
intelligence are vitiated by the two facts that first, as many of
them will admit, it is doubtful just what it is they are testing,
and, in the second place, that races are mixed. This is par¬
ticularly true in the case of the Negroes 3 in New York City,
less than two percent of the group from whom I obtained
genealogical material claimed pure Negro ancestry, and while
this percentage is undoubtedly low, the fact remains that the
vast majority of Negroes in America are of mixed ancestry.

If ability to successfully live in one culture were restricted
to persons of one race, how could we account for the fact that
we see persons of the most diverse races living together, for
example, in this country, quite as though they were naturally
endowed with the ability to meet the problems of living here,
while again we witness an entire alien people adopting our
civilization, to use the Japanese again for illustration?

Our civilization is what it is because of certain historic events
which occurred in the course of its development. So we can
also say for the civilization of the African, of the Eskimo, of
the Australian. And the people who lived in these civiliza¬
tions like ourselves, view the things they do — as a result of
living in them — not as inbred, but as inborn. To the Negro
in Africa, it would be incomprehensible for a man to work at
a machine all day for a few bits of paper to be given him at
the end of his work-day, and in the same way, the white trav¬
eller stigmatizes the African as lazy because he will not see
the necessity for entering on a gruelling forced march so as
to reach a certain point in a given time. And when we turn to
our civilization, we find that it has many culture-patterns, as
we may term these methods of behavior. They are ingrained
in us through long habituation, and their violation evokes a

THE J^EGRO zAND AMERICAN TRADITION 359

strong emotional response in us, no matter what our racial
background. Thus for a person to eat with a knife in place
of a fork, or to go about the streets hatless, or for a woman
to wear short dresses when long ones are in fashion, are all
violations of the patterns we have been brought up to feel
right and proper, and we react violently to them. More seri¬
ous, for a young man not to “settle down” and make as much
money as he can is regarded as bordering on the immoral,
while, in the regime of sex the rigid patterns have been re¬
marked upon, as has been the unmitigated condemnation which
the breaking of these taboos calls forth. The examples which
I have given above of the reaction of the Negro to the general
cultural patterns of this country might be multiplied to include
almost as many social facts as are observable, and yet, wherever
we might go, we would find the Negro reacting to the same
situations in much the same fashion as his white brother.

What, then, is the particular Negro genius for culture? Is
there such a thing? Does he contribute something of his vivid,
and yet at the same time softly gracious personality to the
general culture in which he lives? What there is to-day in
Harlem distinct from the white culture which surrounds it,

is, as far as I am able to see, merely a remnant from the peas¬
ant days in the South. Of the African culture, not a trace.
Even the spirituals are an expression of the emotion of the
Negro playing through the typical religious patterns of white
America. But from that emotional quality in the Negro,
which is to be sensed rather than measured, comes the feeling
that, though strongly acculturated to the prevalent pattern
of behavior, the Negroes may, at the same time, influence it
somewhat eventually through the appeal of that quality.

That they have absorbed the culture of America is too
obvious, almost, to be mentioned. They have absorbed it as
all great racial and social groups in this country have absorbed

it. And they face much the same problems as these groups
face. The social ostracism to which they are subjected is only
different in extent from that to which the Jew is subjected.
The fierce reaction of race-pride is quite the same in both
groups. But, whether in Negro or in Jew, the protest avails

360 THE V(EW O^EGRO

nothing, apparently. All racial and social elements in our
population who live here long enough become acculturated,
Americanized in the truest sense of the word, eventually. They
learn our culture and react according to its patterns, against
which all the protestations of the possession of, or of hot de¬
sire for, a peculiar culture mean nothing.

As we turn to Harlem we see its social and economic and
political make-up a* part of the larger whole of the city —
separate from it, it is true, but still essentially not different
from any other American community in which the modes of
life and of action are determined by the great dicta of “what
is done.” In other words, it represents, as do all American
communities which it resembles, a case of complete accultura¬
tion. And so, I return again to my reaction on first seeing this
center of Negro activity, as the complete description of it:
“Why, it’s the same pattern, only a different shade!”

THE PARADOX OF COLOR

Walter White

The hushed tenseness within the theater was broken only
by the excited chattering between the scenes which served as
oases of relief. One reassured himself by touching his neigh¬
bor or gripping the edge of the bench as a magnificently pro¬
portioned Negro on the tiny Provincetown Theatre stage, with
a voice of marvellous power and with a finished artistry enacted
Eugene O’Neill’s epic of human terror, The Emperor Jones.
For years I had nourished the conceit that nothing in or of the
theater could thrill me — I was sure my years of theater-going
had made me immune to the tricks and the trappings which
managers and actors use to get their tears and smiles and laughs.
A few seasons ago my shell of conceit was cracked a little —
in that third act of Karel Capek’s R. U. R. when Rossum’s
automatons swarmed over the parapet to wipe out the last
human being. But the chills that chased each other up and
down my spine then were only pleasurable tingles compared
to the sympathetic terror evoked by Paul Robeson as he fled
blindly through the impenetrable forest of the “West Indian
island not yet self-determined by white marines.”

Nor was I alone. When, after remaining in darkness from
the second through the eighth and final scene, the house was
flooded with light, a concerted sigh of relief welled up from
all over the theater. With real joy we heard the reassuring
roar of taxicabs and muffled street noises of Greenwich Village
and knew we were safe in New York. Wave after wave of
applause, almost hysterical with relief, brought Paul Robeson
time and time again before the curtain to receive the acclaim
his art had merited. Almost shyly he bowed again and again
as the storm of handclapping and bravos surged and broke
upon the tiny stage. His color — his race — all, all were for¬
gotten by those he had stirred so deeply with his art.

361

362 THE D^EW V^EGRO

Outside in narrow, noisy Macdougal Street the four of us
stood. Mrs. Robeson, alert, intelligent, merry, an expert
chemist for years in one of New York’s leading hospitals ;
Paul Robeson, clad now in conventional tweeds in place of the
ornate, gold-laced trappings of the Emperor Jones; my wife
and I. We wanted supper and a place to talk. All about us
blinked invitingly the lights of restaurants and inns of New
York’s Bohemia. Place after place was suggested and dis¬
carded. Here a colored man and his companion had been
made to wait interminably until, disgusted, they had left.
There a party of four colored people, all university graduates,
had been told flatly by the proprietress, late of North Carolina,
she did not serve “niggers.” At another, other colored people
had been stared at so rudely they had bolted their food and
left in confusion. The Civil Rights Act of New York would
have protected us — but we were too much under the spell of
the theater we had just quitted to want to insist on the rights
the law gave us. So we mounted a bus and rode seven miles
or more to colored Harlem where we could be served with
food without fear of insult or contumely. The man whose art
had brought homage to his feet from sophisticated New York
could not enter even the cheapest of the eating places of lower
New York with the assurance that some unpleasantness might

not come to him before he left.

What does race prejudice do to the inner man of him who
is the victim of that prejudice? What is the feeling within
the breasts of the Paul Robesons, the Roland Hayes’s, the
Harry Burleighs, as they listen to the applause of those whose
kind receive them as artists but refuse to accept them as men?
It is of this inner conflict of the black man in America — or,
more specifically in New York City, I shall try to speak.

I approach my task with reluctance — it is no easy matter to
picture that effect which race or color prejudice has on the
Negro of fineness of soul who is its victim. Of wounds to the
flesh it is easy to speak. It is not difficult to tell of lynchings
and injustices and race proscription. Of wounds to the spirit
which are a thousand times more deadly and cruel it is im¬
possible to tell in entirety. On the one hand lies the Scylla

THE C^EGRO HND * AMERICAN TRADITION 363

of bathos and on the other the Charybdis of insensivity to
subtler shadings of the spirit. If I can evoke in your mind
a picture of what results proscription has brought, I am content.

With its population made up of peoples from every corner
of the earth, New York City is, without doubt, more free from
ordinary manifestations of prejudice than any other city in the
United States. Its Jewish, Italian, German, French, Greek,
Czecho-Slovakian, Irish, Hungarian quarters with their teeming
thousands and hundreds of thousands form so great a per¬
centage of the city’s population that “white, Gentile, Protes¬
tant” Nordics have but little opportunity to develop their
prejudices as they do, for example, in Mississippi or the District
of Columbia. It was no idle joke when some forgotten wit
remarked, “The Jews own New York, the Irish run it and the
Negroes enjoy it.”

New York’s polyglot population, which causes such distress
to the Lothrop Stoddards and the Madison Grants, by a curi¬
ous anomaly, has created more nearly than any other section
that democracy which is the proud boast but rarely practised
accomplishment of these United States. The Ku Klux Klan
has made but little headway in New York City for the very
simple reason that the proscribed outnumber the proscribers.
Thus race prejudice cannot work its will upon Jew or Catholic
— or Negro, as in other more genuinely American centers.
This combined with the fact that most people in New York are
so busy they haven’t time to spend in hating other people,
makes New York as nearly ideal a place for colored people
as exists in America.

Despite these alleviating causes, however, New T ork is in
the United States where prejudice appears to be indigenous.
Its population includes many Southern whites who have
brought North with them their hatreds. There are here many
whites who are not Southern but whose minds have indelibly
fixed upon them the stereotype of a Negro who is either a
buffoon or a degenerate beast or a subservient lackey. From
these the Negro knows he is ever in danger of insult or injury.
This situation creates various attitudes of mind among those
who are its victims. Upon most the acquisition of education

364 THE 3\ CEW E^EGRO

and culture, of wealth and sensitiveness causes a figurative and
literal withdrawal, as far as is humanly possible or as necessity
permits, from all contacts with the outside world where un¬
pleasant situations may arise. This naturally means the. de¬
velopment of an intensive Negro culture and a definitely
bounded city within a city. Doubtless there are some advan¬
tages, but it is certain that such voluntary segregation works a
greater loss upon those within and those without the circle.

Upon those within, it cuts off to a large extent the world of
music, of the theater, of most of those contacts which mean
growth and development and which denied, mean stagnation
and spiritual atrophy. It develops as well a tendency towards
self-pity, towards a fatal conviction that they of all peoples
are most oppressed. The harmful effects of such reactions are

too obvious to need elaboration.

Upon those without, the results are equally mischievous.
First there is the loss of that deep spirituality, that gift of
song and art, that indefinable thing which perhaps can best
be termed the over-soul of the Negro, which has given America
the only genuinely artistic things which the world recognizes
as distinctive American contributions to the arts.

More conventional notions as Thomas Dixon and Octavus
Roy Cohen and Irvin Cobb have falsely painted them, of what
the Negro is and does and thinks continue to persist, while those
who represent more truly the real Negro avoid all contact

with other races.

There are, however, many other ways of avoidance of pro¬
scription and prejudice. Of these one of.no small importance
is that popularly known as “passing,” that is, those whose skin is
of such color that they can pass as white may do so. This is
not difficult; there are so many swarthy races represented in
New York’s population that even colored people who could
easily be distinguished by their own race as Negroes, pass as
French or Spanish or Cuban with ease. Of these there are
two classes. First are those who for various reasons disappear
entirely and go over the line to become white in business, social
and all other relationships. The number of these is very large

much larger than is commonly suspected. To my personal

THE !\EGRO zAND AMERICAN TRADITION 365

knowledge one of the prominent surgeons of New York City
who has an elaborately furnished suite of offices in an exclusive
neighborhood, whose fees run often into four figures, who
moves with his family in society of such standing that the names
of its members appear frequently in the society columns of
the metropolitan press, is a colored man from a Southern city.
There he grew tired of the proscribed life he was forced to
lead, decided to move North and forget he was a colored
man. He met with success, married well and he and his wife
and their children form as happy a family circle as one could
hope to see. O’Neill All Godls Chillun Got Wings to the
contrary, his wife loves him but the more for his courage in
telling her of his race when first they met and loved.

This doctor’s case is not an exception. Colored people
know many of their own who have done likewise. In New
York there is at least one man high in the field of journalism,
a certain famous singer, several prominent figures of the stage,
in fact, in almost any field that could be mentioned there are
those who are colored but who have left their race for wider
opportunity and for freedom from race prejudice. Just a few
days before this article is being written I received a note from
a woman whose name is far from being obscure in the world
of the arts. The night before, she wrote me, there had been
a party at her studio. Among the guests were three Southern
whites who, in a confidential mood, had told her of a plan the
Ku Klux Klan was devising for capitalizing in New York
prejudice against the Negro. When I asked her why she had
given me the information she told me her father, resident at
the time of her birth in a Southern state, was a Negro.

The other group is made up of the many others who “pass”
only occasionally. Some of these do so for business reasons,
others when they go out to dine or to the theater.

If a personal reference may be forgiven, I have had the
unique experience within the past seven years of investigating
some thirty-seven lynchings and eight race riots by the simple
method of not telling those whom I was investigating of the
Negro blood within my veins.

Large as is the number of those who have crossed the line.

366 THE D^EW ViEGRO

they form but a small percentage of those who might follow
such an example but who do not. The constant hammering of
three hundred years of oppression has resulted in a race con¬
sciousness among the Negroes of the United States which is
amazing to those who know how powerful it is. In America,
as is well known, all persons with any discernible percentage of
Negro blood are classed as Negroes, subject therefore to all of
the manifestations of prejudice. They are never allowed to
forget their race. By prejudice ranging from the more violent
forms like lynching and other forms of physical violence down
to more subtle but none the less effective methods, Negroes
of the United States have been welded into a homogeneity of
thought and a commonness of purpose in combating a common
foe. These external and internal forces have gradually cre¬
ated a state of mind among Negroes which is rapidly becom¬
ing more pronounced where they realize that just so long as
one Negro can be made the victim of prejudice because he is
a Negro, no other Negro is safe from that same oppression.
This applies geographically, as is seen in the support given by
colored people in cities like Boston, New \ ork and Chicago
to those who oppose lynching of Negroes in the South, and it
applies to that large element of colored people whose skins
are lighter wTho realize that their cause is common with that of

all Negroes regardless of color.

Unfortunately, however, color prejudice creates certain
attitudes of mind on the part of some colored people which
form color lines within the color line. Living in an atmos¬
phere where swarthiness of skin brings, almost automatically,
denial of opportunity, it is as inevitable as it is regrettable that
there should grow up among Negroes themselves distinctions
based on skin color and hair texture. There are many places
where this pernicious custom is more powerful than in New
York — for example, there are cities where only mulattoes at¬
tend certain churches while those whose skins are dark brown
or black attend others. Marriages between colored men and
women whose skins differ markedly in color, and indeed, less
intimate relations are frowned upon. Since those of lighter
color could more often secure the better jobs an even wider

THE C^EGRO zAND .AMERICAN TRADITION 367

chasm has come between them, as those with economic and
cultural opportunity have progressed more rapidly than those
whose skin denied them opportunity.

Thus even among intelligent Negroes there has come into
being the fallacious belief that black Negroes are less able to
achieve success. Naturally such a condition had led to jealousy
and suspicion on the part of darker Negroes, chafing at their
bonds and resentful of the patronizing attitude of those of
lighter color.

In New York City this feeling between black and mulatto
has been accentuated by the presence of some 40,000 Negroes
from the West Indies, and particularly by the propaganda of
Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Asso¬
ciation. In contrast to the division between white and colored
peoples in the United States, there is in the West Indies, as
has been pointed out by Josiah Royce and others, a tri-partite
problem of race relations with whites, blacks and mulattoes.
The latter mingle freely with whites in business and other
relations and even socially. But neither white nor mulatto
has any extensive contact on an equal plane with the blacks.
It is this system which has enabled the English whites in the
islands to rule and exploit though they as rulers are vastly
inferior numerically to blacks and mulattoes.

The psychology thus created is visible among many of the
West Indian Negroes in New York. It was the same back¬
ground of the English brand of race prejudice which actuated
Garvey in preaching that only those who were of unmixed
Negro blood were Negroes. It is true beyond doubt that such
a doctrine created for a time greater antagonisms among col¬
ored people, but an inevitable reaction has set in which, in
time, will probably bring about a greater unity than before
among Negroes in the United States.

We have therefore in Harlem this strange mixture of re¬
actions not only to prejudice from without but to equally potent
prejudices from within. Many are the comedies and many
are the tragedies which these artificial lines of demarcation
have created. Yet with all these forces and counter forces at
work, there can be seen emerging some definite and hopeful

368 THE CNiEW ^ EGRO

signs of racial unity. Though it hearkens back to the middle
ages, this is essential in the creation of a united front against
that race and color prejudice with which the Negro, educated
or illiterate, rich or poor, native or foreign-born, mulatto,
octoroon, quadroon, or black, must strive continuously.

THE TASK OF NEGRO WOMANHOOD

Elise Johnson McDougald

Throughout the years of history, woman has been the
weather-vane, the indicator, showing in which direction the
wind of destiny blows. Her status and development have
augured now calm and stability, now swift currents of prog¬
ress. What then is to be said of the Negro woman of to-day,
whose problems are of such import to her race?

A study of her contributions to any one community, through¬
out America, would illuminate the pathway being trod by her
people. There is, however, an advantage in focusing upon the
women of Harlem — modern city in the world’s metropolis.
Here, more than anywhere else, the Negro woman is free
from the cruder handicaps of primitive household hardships
and the grosser forms of sex and race subjugation. Here, she
has considerable opportunity to measure her powers in the
intellectual and industrial fields of the great city. The ques¬
tions naturally arise: “What are her difficulties?” and, “How
is she solving them?”

To answer these questions, one must have in mind not any
one Negro woman, but rather a colorful pageant of individu¬
als, each differently endowed. Like the red and yellow of the
tiger-lily, the skin of one is brilliant against the star-lit dark¬
ness of a racial sister. From grace to strength, they vary in
infinite degree, with traces of the race’s history left in physical
and mental outline on each. With a discerning mind, one
catches the multiform charm, beauty and character of Negro
women, and grasps the fact that their problems cannot be
thought of in mass.

Because only a few have caught this vision, even in New
York, the general attitude of mind causes the Negro woman
serious difficulty. She is conscious that what is left of chivalry
is not directed toward her. She realizes that the ideals of

369

37o THE V^EW R^EGRO

beauty, built up in the fine arts, have excluded her almost
entirely. Instead, the grotesque Aunt Jemimas of the street¬
car advertisements, proclaim only an ability to serve, without
grace of loveliness. Nor does the drama catch her finest spirit.
She is most often used to provoke the mirthless laugh of
ridicule j or to portray feminine viciousness or vulgarity not
peculiar to Negroes. This is the shadow over her. To a race
naturally sunny comes the twilight of self-doubt and a sense
of personal inferiority. It cannot be denied that these are
potent and detrimental influences, though not generally recog¬
nized because they are in the realm of the mental and spir¬
itual. More apparent are the economic handicaps which follow
her recent entrance into industry. It is conceded that she has
special difficulties because of the poor working conditions and
low wages of her men. It is not surprising that only the most
determined women forge ahead to results other than mere
survival. To the gifted, the zest of meeting a challenge is a
compensating factor which often brings success. The few
who do prove their mettle, stimulate one to a closer study of
how this achievement is won under contemporary conditions.

Better to visualize the Negro woman at her job, our vision
of a host of individuals must once more resolve itself into
groups on the basis of activity. First, comes a very small
leisure group — the wives and daughters of men who are in
business, in the professions and a few well-paid personal service
occupations. Second, a most active and progressive group, the
women in business and the professions. Third, the many
women in the trades and industry. Fourth, a group weighty
in numbers struggling on in domestic service, with an even less
fortunate fringe of casual workers, fluctuating with the eco¬
nomic temper of the times.

The first is a pleasing group to see. It is picked for outward
beauty by Negro men with much the same feeling as other
Americans of the same economic class. Keeping their women
free to preside over the family, these women are affected by
the problems of every wife and mother, but touched only
faintly by their race’s hardships. They do share acutely in the
prevailing difficulty of finding competent household help.

\ ■ .

WiNOtO

Re i//

El ise J. McDougald

WPffl - f

THE C^EGRO *AND AMERICAN TRADITION 371

Negro wives find Negro maids unwilling generally to work in
their own neighborhoods, for various reasons. They do not
wish to work where there is a possibility of acquaintances com¬
ing into contact with them while they serve and they still
harbor the misconception that Negroes of any station are un¬
able to pay as much as persons of the other race. It is in these
homes of comparative ease that we find the polite activities
of social exclusiveness. The luxuries of well-appointed homes,
modest motors, tennis, golf and country clubs, trips to Europe
and California, make for social standing. The problem con¬
fronting the refined Negro family is to know others of the
same achievement. The search for kindred spirits gradually
grows less difficult j in the past it led to the custom of visiting
all the large cities in order to know similar groups of cultured
Negro people. In recent years, the more serious minded Negro
woman’s visit to Europe has been extended from months to
years for the purpose of study and travel. The European
success which meets this type of ambition is instanced in the
conferring of the doctorate in philosophy upon a Negro woman,
Dr. Anna J. Cooper, at the last commencement of the Sor-
bonne, Paris. Similarly, a score of Negro women are sojourn¬
ing abroad in various countries for the spiritual relief and
cultural stimulation afforded there.

A spirit of stress and struggles characterizes the second two
groups. These women of business, profession and trade are
the hub of the wheel of progress. Their burden is twofold.
Many are wives and mothers whose husbands are insufficiently
paid, or who have succumbed to social maladjustment and have
abandoned their families. An appalling number are widows.
They face the great problem of leaving home each day and at
the same time trying to rear children in their spare time — this,
too, in neighborhoods where rents are large, standards of
dress and recreation high and costly, and social danger on the
increase. One cannot resist the temptation to pause for a mo¬
ment and pay tribute to these Negro mothers. And to call
attention to the service she is rendering to the nation, in her
struggle against great odds to educate and care for one group
of the country’s children. If the mothers of the race should

372

THE CNiEW U^EGRO

ever be honored by state or federal legislation, the artist’s
imagination will find a more inspiring subject in the modern
Negro mother — self-directed but as loyal and tender as the
much extolled, yet pitiable black mammy of slavery days.

The great commercial life of New York City is only slightly
touched by the Negro woman, of our second group. Negro
business men offer her most of their work, but their number
is limited. Outside of this field in Negro offices, custom is once
more against her, and competition is keen for all. However,
Negro girls are training and some are holding exceptional jobs.
One of the professors in a New York college has had a young
colored woman as secretary for the past three or four years.
Another holds the head clerical position in an organization
where reliable handling of detail and a sense of business ethics
are essential. Quietly these women prove their worth, so that
when a vacancy exists and there is a call, it is difficult to find
even one competent colored secretary who is not employed.
As a result of the opportunity in clerical work in the educa¬
tional system of New York City, a number have qualified for
such positions, one having been recently appointed to the office
of a high school. In other departments, the civil service in
New York City is no longer free from discrimination. The
casual personal interview, that tenacious and retrogressive prac¬
tice introduced into the federal administration during the
World War, has spread and often nullifies the Negro woman’s
success in written tests. The successful young woman cited
above was three times “turned down” as undesirable on the
basis of the personal interview. In the great mercantile houses,
the many young Negro girls who might be well suited to sales
positions are barred from all but menial positions. Even so,
one Negro woman, beginning as a uniformed maid in the shoe
department of one of the largest stores, has pulled herself up
to the position of ahead of stock.” One of the most prosperous
monthly magazines of national circulation has for the head
of its news service a Negro woman who rose from the position
of stenographer. Her duties involve attendance upon staff
conferences, executive supervision of her staff of white office
workers, broadcasting and journalism of the highest order.

THE O^EGRO v{ND ^AMERICAN TRADITION 373

Yet in spite of the claims of justice and proved efficiency,
telephone and insurance companies and other corporations
which receive considerable patronage from Negroes deny them
proportionate employment. Fortunately this is an era of
changing customs. There is hope that a less selfish racial atti¬
tude will prevail. It is a heartening fact that there is an in¬
creasing number of Americans who will lend a hand in the
game fight of the worthy.

Throughout the South, where businesses for Negro patron¬
age are under the control of Negroes to a large extent, there
are already many opportunities for Negro women. But, be¬
cause of the nerve strain and spiritual drain of hostile social
conditions in that section, Negro women are turning away from
opportunities there to find a freer and fuller life in the North.

In the less crowded professional vocations, the outlook is
more cheerful. In these fields, the Negro woman is dependent
largely upon herself and her own race for work. In the legal,
dental and medical professions, successful women practitioners
have usually worked their way through college and are “man¬
aging” on the small fees that can be received from an under¬
paid public.

Social conditions in America are hardest upon the Negro
because he is lowest in the economic scale. The tendency to
force the Negro downward, gives rise to serious social prob¬
lems and to a consequent demand for trained college women
in the profession of social wcrk. The need has been met with
a response from young college women, anxious to devote their
education and lives toward helping the submerged classes.
Much of the social work has been pioneer in nature 3 the pay
has been small, with little possibility of advancement. For,
even in work among Negroes, the better paying positions are
reserved for whites. The Negro college woman is doing her
bit at a sacrifice, along such lines as these: as probation offi¬
cers, investigators and police women in the correctional depart¬
ments of the city 3 as Big Sisters attached to the Children’s
Court 3 as field workers and visitors for relief organizations,
missions and churches 3 as secretaries for traveller’s aid societies;
in the many organizations devoted to preventative and educa-

374 THE O^EW E^EGRO

tional medicine ; in clinics and hospitals and as boys’ and girls’
welfare workers in recreation and industry.

In the profession of nursing, there are over three hundred
in New York City. In the dark blue linen uniform of Henry
Street Visiting Nurse Service, the Negro woman can be seen
hurrying earnestly from house to house on her round of free
relief to the needy. Again, she is in many other branches of
public health nursing, in the public schools, milk stations and
diet kitchens. The Negro woman is in the wards of two of
the large city hospitals and clinics. After a score of years of
service in one such institution, a Negro woman became super¬
intendent of nurses in the war emergency. Deposed after the
armistice, though eminently satisfactory, she retained connec¬
tion with the training school as lecturer, for the inspiration she
could be to “her girls.” The growing need for the executive
nurse is being successfully met as instanced by the supervisors
in day nurseries and private sanitariums, financed and operated
in Harlem entirely by Negroes. Throughout the South there
is a clear and anxious call to nurses to carry the gospel of
hygiene to the rural sections and to minister to the suffering
not reached by organizations already in the communities. One
social worker, in New York City, though a teacher by profes¬
sion, is head of an organization whose program is to raise
money for the payment of nurses to do the work described
above. In other centers, West and South, the professional
Negro nurse is supplanting the untrained woman attendant of
former years.

In New York City, nearly three hundred women share in
the good conditions obtaining there in the teaching profession.
They measure up to the high pedagogical requirements of the
city and state law, and are increasingly leaders in the com¬
munity. In a city where the schools are not segregated, she is
meeting with success among white as well as colored children
in positions ranging from clerk in the elementary school on up
through the graded ranks of teachers in the lower grades, of
special subjects in the higher grades, in the junior high schools
and in the senior high schools. One Negro woman is assistant
principal in an elementary school where the other assistant and

THE A CEGRO .AND AMERICAN TRADITION 375

the principal are white men and the majority of the teachers
white. Another Negro woman serves in the capacity of visit¬
ing teacher to several schools, calling upon both white and
colored families and experiencing no difficulty in making social
adjustments. Still another Negro woman is a vocational coun¬
sellor under the Board of Education, in a junior high school.
She is advising children of both races as to future courses of
study to pursue and as to the vocations in which tests prove
them to be apt. This position, the result of pioneer work by
another Negro woman, is unique in the school system of New
York.

In the teaching profession, too, the Negro woman finds
evidence of the white worker’s fear of competition. The need
for teachers is still so great that little friction exists. When
it does seem imminent, it is smoothed away, as it recently was
at a meeting of school principals. From the floor a discussion
began with: “What are we going to do about this problem
of the increasing number of Negro teachers coming into our
schools?” It ended promptly through the suggestion of an¬
other principal: “Send all you get and don’t want over to my
school. I have two now and I’ll match their work with any
two of the best you name.” Outside of New York City, the
Negro woman teacher faces problems almost as difficult as
those besetting the pioneers in the field. Night riders are
terrorizing the leading educators of the South, with the same
tactics used years ago in the burning of buildings and in the
threatening of personal injury. Negro teachers in some sec¬
tions show heroism matching that of such women as Maria
Becroft, Mary Wormely, Margaret Thompson, Fannie Hamp¬
ton, Myrtilla Miner and others who in the early ’8o’s faced
riot and violence which closed colored schools and made
educational work a hazardous vocation. Throughout the North
and South, urban and rural teachers form an earnest and for¬
ward-looking group of women. They are endeavoring to
hold for the future the progress that has been made in the
past. The Negro woman teacher finds that, figuratively speak¬
ing, she must stand on her tip toes to do it, for educational
standards are no longer what they were. Surrounded by forces

37 6 THE ^ CEW EGRO

which persistently work to establish the myth of his inferiority,
the Negro youth must be encouraged to think vigorously and
to maintain a critical attitude toward what he is taught. The
Negro teacher is bending herself to the task of imparting this
power to hold the spiritual and mental balance under hostile
conditions. Though her salary in most places lags behind the
service she is rendering (exceptions being noted where the
Jeannes-Slater and Rosenwald Funds bring relief), her inspira¬
tion is the belief that the hope of the race is in the New Negro
student. Of more vital import than what he is compelled to
be to-day, is what he is determined to make of himself to¬
morrow. And, the Negro woman teacher, bringing to the
class room sympathy and judgment, is a mighty force in this
battle.

Comparatively new are opportunities in the field of trained
library work for the Negro woman. In New Y ork City, the
Public Library system has opened its service to the employment
of colored women of college grade. The vision of those in
charge of their training is illuminated by fires that have some¬
what of a missionary glow. There is an ever-present hope that,
once trained, the Negro woman librarian will, scatter such op¬
portunities across the country, establishing branches wherever
none exist. Into such an emergency, the successful Negro
woman head of the library of the Veterans5 Hospital at Tuske-
gee, stepped from the New York Library on One Hundred
and Thirty-fifth Street. Recently at this same Harlem Branch
Library a Negro woman has been placed in charge of the large,
permanent collection of books by or about Negroes and ex¬
amples of Negro art. Another is acting head of the children’s
department, and several others have been assigned to branches
throughout the city where there is little or no Negro patronage.
They are thus rendering exceptional service, and additionally
creating an impetus for the enlargement of this field for Negro
women.

One might go on to such interesting and more unusual pro¬
fessions as bacteriology, chemistry and pharmacy, etc., and find
that though the number in any one may be small, the Negro
woman is creditably represented in practically every one, and

THE TiEGRO HND .AMERICAN TRADITION 377

according to ability, she is meeting with success. In the fields
of literature and art, the Negro woman’s culture has once more
begun to flower. After the long quiescent period, following
the harvest from the pen of Phyllis Wheatley, Negro women
dramatists, poets and novelists are enjoying a vogue in print.
There is every prospect that the Negro woman will enrich
American literature and art with stylistic portrayal of her ex¬
perience and her problems.

Closing the door on the home anxieties, the women engaged
in trades and in industry faces serious difficulty in competition
in the open working field. Custom is against the Negro woman
in all but a few trade and industrial occupations. She has, how¬
ever, been established long in the dressmaking trade as helpers
and finishers, and more recently as drapers and fitters in some
of the best establishments. Several Negro women are them¬
selves proprietors of shops in the country’s great fashion dis¬
trict. In millinery, power-sewing machine operating on cloth,
straw and leather, there are few Negro women. The laissez-
faire attitude of practically all trade unions has, in the past,
made of the Negro woman an unwilling menace to the cause of
labor. When one reviews the demands now being made by
white women workers, for labor colleges, for political recogni¬
tion, and for representation at world conferences, one cannot
help but feel how far back on the road of labor progress is the
struggling group of Negro workers. Yet, they are gradually
becoming more alive to the issues involved. One Negro
woman has held office and been most active in the flower and
feather workers’ union. Another has been a paid organizer
in the garment industry for several years. Still another has
co-operated as an unpaid worker, in endeavoring to prevent
Negro women from breaking union strikes. Pacing with pick¬
ets, or explaining at meetings the wisdom underlying union
principles, she became convinced that the problem lay as much
in the short-sighted, “wait-until-a-strike-comes” policy of the
labor unions themselves, as in the alienated or unintelligent
attitude of the Negro worker. More sincerity and understand¬
ing was greatly needed. Within the past year, she has worked
with two Negro men, a white woman and two white men, all

378 THE C^EW V^EGRO

* union members, and with this committee of six has brought
about a conference of accredited delegates from thirty-three
unions in New York City. This is the first all-union conference
held on adjusting the Negro workers’ problem. As a result,
a permanent organization has been formed called the Trade
Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers. Headquar¬
ters have been established and a program is well under way
which includes: — organizing special industries, manned largely
by Negro men and women ; working to bring about changes
in the constitutions of trade unions which make it impossible
or difficult for Negroes to join; educating both black and white
workers in union principles through conferences and speeches;
making necessary adjustments among union members of the
two races and taking part in righting any grievances of Negro
union members.

In trade cookery, the Negro woman’s talent and past ex¬
perience is recognized. Her problem here is to find employers
who will let her work her way to managerial positions, in tea¬
rooms, candy shops and institutions. One such employer be¬
came convinced that the managing cook, a young colored
graduate of Pratt Institute, could build up a business that had
been failing. Pie offered her a partnership. As in the cases
of a number of such women, her barrier was lack of capital.
No matter how highly trained, nor how much speed and busi¬
ness acumen has been acquired, the Negro’s credit is held in
doubt. An exception in this matter of capital will serve to.
prove the rule. Thirty years ago, a young Negro girl began
learning all branches of the fur trade. She is now in business
for herself, employing three women of her race and one Jewish
man. She has made fur experts of still another half-dozen
colored girls. Such instances as these justify the prediction
that the foothold which is being gained in the trade world will,
year by year, become more secure.

Because of the limited fields for this group, many of the
unsuccessful drift into the fourth social grade — the domestic
and casual workers. These drifters increase the difficulties of
the Negro women suited to housework. New standards of
household management are forming and the problem of the

Mary McLeod Bethune

THE C^EGRO *AND ^AMERICAN TRADITION 379

Negro woman is to meet these new businesslike ideals. The
constant influx of workers unfamiliar with household conditions
in New York keeps the situation one of turmoil. The Negro
woman, moreover, is revolting against residential domestic ser¬
vice. It is a last stand in her fight to maintain a semblance
of family life. For this reason, principally, the number of
day or casual workers is on the increase. Happiness is almost
impossible under the strain of these conditions. Health and
morale suffer, but how else can her children, loose all after¬
noon, be gathered together at nightfall? Through it all she
manages to give satisfactory service and the Negro woman is
sought after for this unpopular work, largely because her hon¬
esty, loyalty .and cleanliness have stood the test of time.
Through her drudgery, the women of other groups find leisure
time for progress. This is one of her contributions to America.

It is apparent from what has been said that even in New
York City, Negro women are of a race which is free neither
economically, socially nor spiritually. Like women in general,
but more particularly like those of other oppressed minorities,
the Negro woman has been forced to submit to overpowering
conditions. Pressure has been exerted upon her, both from
without and within her group. Her emotional and sex life is
a reflex of her economic station. The women of the working
class will react, emotionally and sexually, similarly to the
working-class woman of other races. The Negro woman does
not maintain any moral standard which may be assigned chiefly
to qualities of race, any more than a white woman does. Yet
she has been singled out and advertised as having lower sex
standards. Superficial critics who have had contact only with
the lower grades of Negro women, claim that they are more
immoral than other groups of women. This I deny. This is
the sort of criticism which predicates of one race, to its detri¬
ment, that which is common to all races. Sex irregularities are
not a matter of race, but of socio-economic conditions. Re¬
search shows that most of the African tribes from which the
Negro sprang have strict codes for sex relations. There is
no proof of inherent weakness in the ethnic group.

Gradually overcoming the habitual limits imposed upon her

38o *HE U^EW ViEGRO

by slave masters, she increasingly seeks legal sanction for the
consummation and dissolution of sex contracts. Contrary to
popular belief, illegitimacy among Negroes is cause for shame
and grief. When economic, social and biological forces com¬
bined bring about unwed motherhood, the reaction is much the
same as in families in other racial groups. Secrecy is main¬
tained if possible. Generally the married aunt or even the
girl’s mother claims the illegitimate child as her own. The
foundling asylum is seldom sought. Schooled in this kind of
suffering in the days of slavery, the Negro woman often tem¬
pers scorn with sympathy for weakness. Stigma does fall upon
the unmarried mother, but perhaps in this matter the Negro s
attitude is nearer the modern enlightened ideal for the social
treatment of the unfortunate. May not this, too, be consid¬
ered another contribution to America?

With all these forces at work, true sex equality has not been
approximated. The ratio of opportunity in the sex, social, eco¬
nomic and political spheres is about that which exists between
white men and women. In the large, I would say that the
Negro woman is the cultural equal of her man because she
is generally kept in school longer. Negro boys, like white
boys, are usually put to work to subsidize the family income.
The growing economic independence of Negro working women
is causing her to rebel against the domineering family attitude
of the cruder working-class husband. The masses of Negro
men are engaged in menial occupations throughout the work¬
ing day. Their baffled and suppressed desires to determine
their economic life are manifested in overbearing domination
at home. Working mothers are unable to instill different ideals
in the sons. Conditions change slowly. Nevertheless, educa¬
tion and opportunity are modifying the spirit of the younger
Negro men. Trained in modern schools of thought, they begin
to show a wholesome attitude of fellowship and freedom for
their women. The challenge to young Negro womanhood is
to see clearly this trend and grasp the proffered comradeship
with sincerity. In this matter of sex equality, Negro women
have contributed few outstanding militants, a notable instance
being the historic Sojourner Truth. On the whole the Negro

THE T^EGRO A'ND AMERICAN TRADITION 381

woman’s feminist efforts are directed chiefly toward the realiza¬
tion of the equality of the races, the sex struggle assuming the
subordinate place.

Obsessed with difficulties which might well compel individ¬
ualism, the Negro woman has engaged in a considerable amount
of organized action to meet group needs. She has evolved a
federation of her clubs, embracing between eight and ten thou¬
sand women in New York state alone. The state federation
is a part of the National Association of Colored Women,
which, calling together the women from all parts of the coun¬
try, engages itself in enterprises of general race interest. The
national organization of colored women is now firmly estab¬
lished, and under the presidency of Mrs. Bethune is about to
strive for conspicuous goals.

In New York City, many associations exist for social better¬
ment, financed and operated by Negro women. One makes
child welfare its name and special concern. Others, like the
Utility Club, Utopia Neighborhood, Debutantes’ League,
Sempre Fidelius, etc., raise funds for old folks’ homes, a shel¬
ter for delinquent girls and fresh-air camps for children. The
Colored Women’s Branch of the Y. W. C. A. and the women’s
organizations in the many churches as well as the beneficial
lodges and associations, care for the needs of their members.

On the other hand, the educational welfare of the coming
generation has become the chief concern of the national sorori¬
ties of Negro college women. The first to be organized in the
country, the Alpha Kappa Alpha , has a systematized, a contin¬
uous program of educational and vocational guidance for
students of the high schools and colleges. The work of Lambda
Chapter, which covers New York City and its suburbs, has been
most effective in carrying out the national program. Each
year, it gathers together between one and two hundred such
students and gives the girls a chance to hear the life stories of
Negro women, successful in various fields of endeavor. Re¬
cently a trained nurse told how, starting in the same schools
as they, she had risen to the executive position in the Harlem
Health Information Bureau. A commercial artist showed how
real talent had overcome the color line. The graduate phy-

382

THE C\ CEW CNiEGRO

sician was a living example of the modern opportunities in the
newer fields of medicine open to women. The vocations, as
outlets for the creative instinct, became attractive under the
persuasion of the musician, the dressmaker and the decorator.
A recent graduate outlined her plans for meeting the many
difficulties encountered in establishing a dental office and in
building up a practice. A journalist spun the fascinating tale
of her years of experience. The Delta Sigma Theta Sorority
(national in scope) works along similar lines. Alpha Beta
Chapter of New York City, during the current year, presented
a young art student with a scholarship of $1,000 for study
abroad. In such ways as these are the progressive and priv¬
ileged groups of Negro women expressing their community
and race consciousness.

We find the Negro woman, figuratively struck in the face
daily by contempt from the world about her. Within her soul,
she knows little of peace and happiness. But through it all,
she is courageously standing erect, developing within herself
the moral strength to rise above and conquer false attitudes.
She is maintaining her natural beauty and charm and improving
her mind and opportunity. She is measuring up to the needs
of her family, community and race, and radiating a hope
throughout the land.

The wind of the race’s destiny stirs more briskly because of
her striving.

WORLDS OF COLOR

THE NEGRO MIND REACHES OUT 1

W. E. B. DuBois

Once upon a time in my younger years and in the dawn of
this century I wrote: “The problem of the twentieth century
is the problem of the color line.” It was a pert and singing
phrase which I then liked and which since I nave often re¬
hearsed to my soul and asked: — how far is this prophecy or
speculation? To-day in the last years of the century’s first
quarter, let us examine the matter again, especially in the mem¬
ory of that great event of these great years, the World War.
Fruit of the bitter rivalries of economic imperialism, the roots
of that catastrophe were in Africa, deeply entwined at bottom
with the problems of the color line. And of the legacy left,
the problems the world inherits hold the same fatal seed;
world dissension and catastrophe still lurk in the unsolved prob¬
lems of race relations. What then is the world view that the
consideration of this question offers?

Most men would agree that our present problem of problems
was not the Color Problem, but what we call Labor, the
problem of allocating work and income in the tremendous and
increasingly intricate world-embracing industrial machine that
our civilization has built. But despite our concern and good
will, is it not possible that in its consideration our research is
not directed to the vital spots geographically? Our good will
is too often confined to that labor which we see and feel and
exercise around us, rather than directed to the periphery of
the vast circle, where unseen and inarticulate, the determining
factors are at work. And may not the continual baffling of our

1 Reprinted, with revisions by the author, from Foreign Affairs, an American
Quarterly Review, New York, Vol. Ill, No. 3.

385

386 THE C^EW J(EGRO

effort and failure of our formula be due to just such mistakes?
Modern imperialism and modern industrialism are one and the
same system j root and branch of the same tree. The race
problem is the other side of the labor problem $ and the black
man’s burden is the white man’s burden. At least it will be
of absorbing interest, to step within these distant world shad¬
ows, and, looking backward, to view the European and white
American labor problem from this wide perspective, remem¬
bering always that empire is the heavy hand of capital abroad.

With nearly every great European empire to-day walks its
dark colonial shadow, while over all Europe there stretches the
yellow shadow of Asia that lies across the world. One might
indeed read the riddle of Europe by making its present plight
a matter of colonial shadows, speculating on what might
happen if Europe became suddenly shadowless -if Asia and
Africa and the islands were cut permanently away. At any
rate here is a field of inquiry, of likening and contrasting each
land and its far-off shadow.

THE SHADOW OF PORTUGAL

I was attending the Third Pan-African Congress and . I
walked to the Palacio dos Cortes with Magellan. It was in
December, 1923? and in Lisbon. I was rather proud. You see
Magalhaes (to give him the Portuguese spelling) is a mulatto
— small light-brown and his hands quick with gestures. Dr.
Jose de Magalhaes is a busy man: a practising specialist 5 pro¬
fessor in the School of Tropical Medicine whose new build¬
ings are rising 5 and above all, deputy in the Portuguese Par¬
liament from Sao Thome, Africa. Thus this Angolese African,
educated in Lisbon and Paris, is one of the nine colored mem¬
bers of European Parliaments. Portugal has had colored
ministers and now has three colored deputies and a senator.
I saw two Portuguese in succession kissing one colored member
on the floor of the house. Or was he but a dark native ? There

is so much ancient black blood in this peninsula.

Between the Portuguese and the African and near African
there is naturally no “racial” antipathy— no accumulated his-

W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

WORLDS OF COLOR 387

torical hatreds, dislikes, despisings. Not that you would likely
find a black man married to a Portuguese of family and wealth,
but on the other hand it seemed quite natural for Portugal to
make all the blacks of her African empire citizens of Portugal
with the rights of the European born.

Magalhaes and another represent Sao Thome. They are
elected by black folk independent of party. Again and again
I meet black folk from Sao Thome — young students, well-
dressed, well-bred, evidently sons of well-to-do if not wealthy
parents, studying in Portugal, which harbors annually a hun¬
dred such black students.

Sao Thome illustrates some phases of European imperialism
in Africa. This industrial rule involves cheap land and labor
in Africa and large manufacturing capital in Europe, with a
resultant opportunity for the exercise of pressure from home
investors and the press. Once in a while — not often — a feud
between the capitalists and the manufacturers at home throws
sudden light on Africa. For instance, in the Boer War the
“Cocoa Press” backed by the anti-war Liberals attacked the
Unionists and exposed labor conditions in South Africa. In
retaliation, after the war and when the Liberals were in power,
the Unionists attacked labor conditions in the Portuguese cocoa
colonies.

When I heard that an English Lieutenant-Colonel was lec¬
turing in Lisbon, on this very island and its cocoa, I hastened to
listen. As he talked, I remembered. He was soothing the
Portuguese.

The Colonel was an avowal reactionary, a hater of the
“Aborigines Protection Society,” Nevinson, Morel and all their
ilk, and his explanations were most illuminating. It would
seem that “little Englanders” backed by the Cadbury “Cocoa”
press of “pacifist” leanings, made a severe attack on the Union¬
ists during the Boer War and particularly attacked labor con¬
ditions on the Rand; besides opposing Chamberlain, “Empire
preference” and protection. When the Liberals came into
power in 1906 the Unionists in retaliation began to attack
labor conditions in Portuguese Sao Thome, where Cadbury
and others got their cocoa and made the profits out of which

388 THE HEW ^EGRO

they supported the “Daily Mail.” The Colonel declared that
labor conditions in Sao Thome were quite ideal, whereas
Nevinson and others had declared that they constituted black
slavery. The point that interests us, however, is that the Eng¬
lish cocoa manufacturers were forced by frantic efforts to
justify themselves and deny all responsibility. They there¬
fore proceeded to say that it wasn’t true and if it was, the
Portuguese were responsible. Under cover of this bitter con¬
troversy an extraordinary industrial revolution took place: a
boycott was placed on Portuguese cocoa the world over, and
under the mists of recrimination the center of the cocoa-raising
industry was transferred from Portuguese to English soil —
from Sao Thome and Principe to British Nigeria and the Gold
Coast. Before 1900 less than one thousand tons of cocoa had
been raised in British West Africa annually ; by 1920 this had
risen to one hundred and seventy thousand tons.

Of the real facts behind this rush of smoke I only know:
that in the end two new groups of black folk appeared above
the horizon — the black proprietors in Sao Thome who still
raise the best cocoa in the world and who, freed of the over¬
lordship of English capital have achieved a certain political
independence in the Portuguese empire; and the black peasant
proprietors of the cocoa farms of Nigeria who have performed
one of the industrial miracles of a century and become the
center of a world industry. In this development note if you
please the characteristic of all color-line fights — the tearing
across of all rational division of opinion: here is Liberalism,
anti-slavery and cocoa capitalism fighting Toryism, free Negro
proprietors and economic independence. Thus with a demo¬
cratic face at home, modern imperialism turns a visage of stern
and unyielding autocracy toward its darker colonies. This
double-faced attitude is difficult to maintain and puts hard
strain on the national soul that tries it.

Thus in this part of Portuguese Africa the worst aspects of
slavery melted away and colonial proprietors with smaller hold¬
ings could afford to compete with the great planters; wherefore
democracy, both industrially and politically, took new life in
black Portugal. Intelligent black deputies appeared in the

WORLDS OF COLOR 389

Portuguese parliaments, a hundred black students studied in
the Portuguese universities and a new colonial code made black
men citizens of Portugal with full rights. But in Portugal,
alas! no adequate democratic control has been established, nor
can be with an illiteracy of seventy-five percent ; so that while
the colonial code is liberally worded, and economic power has
brought some freedom in Sao Thome, unrestrained Portuguese
and English capital still rules in parts of Angola and in Portu¬
guese East Africa, where no resisting public opinion in England
has yet been aroused. This shadow hangs heavily over Por¬
tugal.

The African shadows of Spain and Italy are but drafts on
some imperial future not yet realized, and touch home in¬
dustry and democracy only through the war budget. But Spain
is pouring treasure into a future Spanish Morocco, and Italy
has already poured out fabulous sums in the attempt to annex
north and northeast Africa, especially Abyssinia. The prince
who is to-day visiting Europe is the first adult successor of that
black Menelik who humbled Italy to the dust at Adowa
in 1896. Insurgent Morocco, independent Abyssinia and
Liberia are, as it were, shadows of Europe on Africa unattached,
and as such they curiously threaten the whole imperial pro¬
gram. On the one hand, they arouse democratic sympathy
in homeland which makes it difficult to submerge them; and
again, they are temptations to agitation for freedom and auton¬
omy on the part of other black and subject populations. What
prophet can tell what world-tempest lurks in these cloud-like
shadows? Then, there is Belgium.

THE SHADOW OF BELGIUM

There is a little black man in Belgium, whose name is
Mfumu Paul Panda. He is filled with a certain resentment
against me and American Negroes. He writes me now and
then, but fairly spits his letters at me, — and they are always
filled with some defense of Belgium in Africa, or rather with
some accusation against England, France and Portugal there.
I do not blame Panda, although I do not agree with his reason-

390 THE E^EW U^EGRO

in g. Unwittingly summer before last I tore his soul in two.
His reason knows that I am right, but his heart denies his
reason. He was nephew and therefore by African custom heir
of a great chief who for thirty years, back to the time of
Stanley, has co-operated with white Belgium. As a child of
five, young Panda was brought home from the Belgian Congo
by a Belgian official and given to his maiden sister. This sister
reared the little black boy as her own, nursed him, dressed him,
schooled him and defended against the criticism of her friends
his right to university training. She was his mother, his friend.
He loved her and revered her. She guided and loved him.
When the second Pan-African Congress came to Brussels it
found Panda leader of the small black colony there and spokes¬
man for black Belgium. He had revisited the Congo and
was full of plans for reform. And he thought of the uplift
of his black compatriots in terms of reform. All this the
Pan-African Congress changed. First it brought on his head
a storm of unmerited abuse from the industrial press: we were
enemies of Belgium ; we were pensioners of the Bolshevists;
we were partisans of England. Panda hotly defended us until
he heard our speeches and read our resolutions.

The Pan-African Congress revealed itself to him with a new
and unexplicable program. It talked of Africans as intelli¬
gent, thinking, self-directing and voting men. It envisaged an
Africa for the Africans and governed by and for Africans, and
it arraigned white Europe, including Belgium, for nameless
and deliberate wrong in Africa. Panda was perplexed and
astonished; and then his white friends and white mother rushed
to the defense of Belgium and blamed him for consorting with
persons with ideas so dangerous and unfair to Belgium. He
turned upon us black folk in complaining wrath. He felt in a
sense deceived and betrayed. He considered us foolishly radi¬
cal. Belgium was not perfect, but was far less blood guilty than
other European powers. Panda continues to send me clippings
and facts to prove this.

In this last matter he is in a sense right. England and
France and Germany deliberately laid their shadow across
Africa. Belgium had Africa thrust upon her. Bismarck in-

391

WORLDS OF COLOR

tended the Congo Free State for Germany and he cynically
made vain and foolish Leopold temporary custodian ; and even
after Bismarck’s fall, Germany dreamed of an Africa which
should include Congo, half the Portuguese territory and all
the French, making Germany the great and dominant African
power. For this she fought the Great War.

Meantime, and slowly, Belgium became dazzled by the
dream of empire. Africa is but a small part of Britain ; Africa
is but a half of larger France. But the Congo is eighty-two
times the size of little Belgium, and at Tervuren, wily Leopold
laid a magic mirror — an intriguing flash of light, a museum set
in rare beauty and approached by magnificent vistas — a flash
of revealing knowledge such as no other modern land possesses
of its colonial possessions. The rank and file of the Belgians
were impressed. They dreamed of wealth and glory. They
received the Congo from Leopold as a royal gift — shyly, but
with secret pride. What nation of the world had so wonderful
a colony! and Belgium started to plan its development.

Meantime the same power that exploited the Congo and
made red rubber under Leopold — these same great merchants
and bankers — still ruled and guided the vast territory. More¬
over, Belgium, impoverished by war and conquest, needed reve¬
nue as never before. The only difference then between the
new Congo and the old was that a Belgian liberal public opinion
had a right to ask questions and must be informed. Propa¬
ganda intimating that this criticism of Belgium was mainly
international jealousy and that the exploitation of black Bel¬
gium would eventually lower taxes for the whites, — this was
nearly enough to leave the old taskmasters and methods in
control in spite of wide plans for eventual education and
reform.

I remember my interview with the socialist Minister for
Colonies. He hesitated to talk with me. He knew what
socialism had promised the worker and what it was unable to
do for the African worker, but he told me his plans for educa¬
tion and uplift. They were fine plans, but they remain plans
even to-day, and the Belgian Congo is still a land of silence
and ignorance, with few schools, with forced industry, with all

392 THE D^EW O^EGRO

the land and natural resources taken from the people and
handed over to the State, and the State, so far as Congo is
concerned, ruled well-nigh absolutely by profitable industry.
Thus the African shadow of Belgium gravely and dangerously
overshadows that little land.

THE SHADOW OF FRANCE

I know two black men in France. One is Candace, black
West Indian deputy, an out-and-out defender of the nation
and more French than the French. The other is Rene Maran,
black Goncourt prize-man and author of Batouala. Maran’s
attack on France and on the black French deputy from Senegal
has gone into the courts and marks an era. Never before have
Negroes criticized the work of the French in Africa.

France’s attitude toward black and colored folk is peculiar.
England knows Negroes chiefly as colonial “natives” or as
occasional curiosities on London streets. America knows Ne¬
groes mainly as freedmen and servants. But for nearly two
centuries France has known educated and well-bred persons of
Negro descent ; they filtered in from the French West Indies,
sons and relatives of French families and recognized as such
under the Code Napoleon, while under English law similar
folk were but nameless bastards. All the great French schools
have had black students here and there; the professions have
known many and the fine arts a few scattered over decades j
but all this was enough to make it impossible to say in France
as elsewhere that Negroes cannot be educated. That is an
absurd statement to a Frenchman. It was not that the French
loved or hated Negroes as such; they simply grew to regard
them as men with the possibilities and shortcomings of men,
added to an unusual natural personal appearance.

Then came the war and France needed black men. She
recruited them by every method, by appeal, by deceit, by half-
concealed force. She threw them ruthlessly into horrible
slaughter. She made them “shock” troops. They walked
from the tall palms of Guinea and looked into the mouths of
Krupp guns without hesitation, with scarcely a tremor. France

WORLDS OF f 01 Oi? 393

watched them offer the blood sacrifice for their adopted
motherland with splendid sang-froid , often with utter abandon.

But for Black Africa, Germany would have overwhelmed
France before American help was in sight. A tremendous wave
of sentiment toward black folk welled up in the French heart.
And back of this sentiment came fear for the future, not simply
fear of Germany reborn but fear of changing English interests,
fear of unstable America. What Africa did for France in
military protection she could easily repeat on a vaster scale ;
wherefore France proposes to protect herself in future from
military aggression by using half a million or more of trained
troops from yellow, brown and black Africa. France has
40,000,000 Frenchmen and 60,000,000 Colonials. Of these
Colonials, 845,000 served in France during the war, of whom
535,000 were soldiers and 310,000 in labor contingents. Of
the soldiers, 440,000 came from North and West Africa. The
peace footing of the French army is now 660,000, to whom
must be added 189,000 Colonial troops. With three years’
service and seven years’ reserve, France hopes in ten years’
time to have 400,000 trained Colonial troops and 450,000 more
ready to be trained. These Colonial troops will serve part of
their time in France.

This program brings France face to face with the prob¬
lem of democratic rule in her colonies. French industry has
had wide experience in the manipulation of democracy at home,
but her colonial experience is negligible. Legally, of course,
the colonies are part of France. Theoretically colonials are
French citizens and already the blacks of the French West In¬
dies and the yellows and browns of North Africa are so recog¬
nized and represented in Parliament. Four towns of Senegal
have similar representation; but beyond this matters hesitate.

All this brings, however, both political and economic difficul¬
ties. Diagne, black deputy from Senegal, was expelled from
the Socialist party because he had made no attempt to organize
a branch of the party in his district. And the whole colonial
bloc stand outside the interests of home political parties, while
these parties know little of the particular local demands of
the colonies. As this situation develops there will come

394

THE C^EW 3\ CEGRO

the question of the practicality of ruling a world nation with
one law-making body. And if devolution of power takes place
what will be the relation of self-governing colonies to the
mother country?

But beyond this more or less nebulous theory looms the
immediately practical problem of French industry. The
French nation and French private industry have invested huge
sums in African colonies, considering black Africa alone. Dakar
is a modern city superimposed on a native market place. Its
public buildings, its vast harbor, its traffic are imposing.
Conakry has miles of warehouses beneath its beautiful palms.
No European country is so rapidly extending its African rail¬
ways — one may ride from St. Louis over halfway to Timbuktu
and from Dakar 1,500 miles to the Gulf of Guinea.

The question is, then, will France be able to make her col¬
onies paying industrial investments and at the same time centers
for such a new birth of Negro civilization and freedom as will
attach to France the mass of black folk in unswerving loyalty
and will to sacrifice. Such a double possibility is to-day by no
means clear. French industry is fighting to-day a terrific
battle in Europe for the hegemony of reborn Central Europe.
The present probabilities are that the future spread of the in¬
dustrial imperialism of the West will be largely under French
leadership. French and Latin imperialism in industry will de¬
pend on alliance with western Asia, northern and central
Africa, with the Congo rather than the Mediterranean as the
southern boundary. Suppose that this new Latin imperialism
emerging from the Great War developed a new antithesis to
English imperialism where blacks and browns and yellows,
subdued, cajoled and governed by white men, form a laboring
proletariat subject to a European white democracy which in-
• dustry controls ; suppose that, contrary to this, Latin Europe
should evolve political control with black men and the Asiatics
having a real voice in Colonial government, while both at
home and in the colonies democracy in industry continued to
progress; what would this cost? It would mean, of course,
nothing less than the giving up of the idea of an exclusive
White Man’s World. It would be a revolt and a tremendous

1 he Librarian

WORLDS OF COLOR 395

revolt against the solidarity of the West in opposition to the
South and East. France moving along this line would perforce
carry Italy, Portugal and Spain with it, and it is the fear of
such a possible idea that explains the deep-seated resentment
against France on the part of England and America. It is not
so much the attitude of France toward Germany that frightens
white Europe, as her apparent flaunting of the white fetish.
The plans of those who would build a world of white men
have always assumed the ultimate acquiescence of the colored
world in the face of their military power and industrial effi¬
ciency, because of the darker world’s lack of unity and babel
of tongues and wide cleft of religious differences. If now one
part of the white world bids for dark support by gifts of at
least partial manhood rights, the remainder of the white world
scents treason and remains grim and unyielding in its heart.
But is it certain that France is going to follow this program?

I walked through the native market at St. Louis in French
Senegal a busy, colorful scene. There was wonderful work
in gold filigree and in leather, all kinds of beads and bracelets
and fish and foods. Mohammedans salaamed at sunset, black-
veiled Moorish women glided like somber ghosts with living
eyesj mighty black men in pale burnooses strode by, — it was
all curious, exotic, alluring. And yet I could not see quite the
new thing that I was looking for. There was no color line
particularly visible and yet there was all the raw material for
it. Most of the white people were in command holding gov¬
ernment office and getting large incomes. Most of the col¬
ored and black folk were laborers with small incomes. In
the fashionable cafes you seldom saw colored folk, but you
did see them now and then and no one seemed to object. There
were schools, good schools, but they fell short of anything like
universal education for the natives. White and colored school
children ran and played together, but the great mass of chil¬
dren were not in school.

As I looked more narrowly, what seemed to be happening
was this: the white Frenchmen were exploiting black Africans
in practically the same way as white Englishmen, but they had
not yet erected or tried to erect caste lines. Consequently, into

396 THE ^EW 0\ CEGRO

the ranks of the exploiters there arose continually black men
and mulattoes, but these dark men were also exploiters. They
had the psychology of the exploiters. They looked upon the
mass of people as means of wealth. The mass therefore had
no leadership. There was no one in the colony except the
unrisen and undeveloped blacks who thought of the colony
as developing and being developed for its own sake and for
the sake of the mass of the people there. Everyone of intelli¬
gence thought that Senegal was being developed for the sake
of France and inevitably they tended to measure its develop¬
ment by the amount of profit.

If this sort of thing goes on will not France find herself in
the same profit-taking colonial industry as England? Indeed,
unless she follows English methods in African colonies can
she compete with England in the amount of profit made, and if
she does not make profit out of her colonies how long will her
industrial masters submit without tremendous industrial re¬
turns? Or if these industrial returns come, what will be the
plight of black French Africa? Batouala voices it. In the
depths of the French Congo one finds the same exploitation
of black folk as in the Belgian Congo or British West Africa.
The only mitigation is that here and there in the Civil Service
are black Frenchmen like Rene Maran who can speak out;
but they seldom do.

For the most part, as I have said, in French Africa, educated
Africans are Europeans. But if education goes far and de¬
velops in Africa a change in this respect must come. For this,
France has a complete theoretical system of education begin¬
ning with the African village and going up to the colleges and
technical schools at Goree. But at present it is, of course, only
a plan and the merest skeleton of accomplishment. On the
picturesque island of Goree whose ancient ramparts face mod¬
ern and commercial Dakar I saw two or three hundred fine
black boys of high school rank gathered in from all Senegal by
competitive tests and taught thoroughly by excellent French
teachers in accordance with a curriculum which, as far as it went,
was equal to that of any European school; its graduates could
enter the higher schools of France. A few hundred students

WORLDS OF COLOR 397

out of a black population of nineteen millions is certainly but
a start. This development will call for money and trained
guidance and will interfere with industry. It is not likely that
the path will be followed and followed fast unless black French
leaders encourage and push France, unless they see the pitfalls
of American and English race leadership and bring the black
apostle to devote himself to race uplift not by the compulsion
of outer hate but by the lure of inner vision.

As yet I see few signs of this. I have walked in Paris with
Diagne who represents Senegal — all Senegal, white and black,
— in the French parliament. But Diagne is a Frenchman who
is accidentally black. I suspect Diagne rather despises his own
black Wolofs. I have talked with Candace, black deputy of
Guadaloupe. Candace is virulently French. He has no con¬
ception of Negro uplift, as apart from French development.
One black deputy alone, Boisneuf of Martinique, has the vision.
His voice rings in parliament. He made the American soldiers
keep their hands off the Senegalese. He made the governor
of Congo apologize and explain ; he made Poincare issue that
extraordinary warning against American prejudice. Is Bois¬
neuf an exception or a prophecy?

One looks on present France and her African shadow, then,
as standing at the parting of tremendous ways; one way leads
f toward democracy for black as well as white — a thorny way
i made more difficult by the organized greed of the imperial
profit-takers within and without the nation; the other road is
| the way of the white world, and of its contradictions and dan¬
gers, English colonies may tell.

THE SHADOW OF ENGLAND

I landed in Sierra Leone last January. The great Mountain
of the Lion crouched above us, its green sides trimmed with
the pretty white villas of the whites, while black town swel¬
tered below. Despite my diplomatic status I was haled before
the police and in the same room where criminals were exam¬
ined I was put through the sharpest grilling I ever met in a
presumably civilized land. Why? I was a black American

398 THE TiEW TiEGRO

and the English fear black folk who have even tasted freedom.
Everything that America has done crudely and shamelessly to
suppress the Negro, England in Sierra Leone has done legally
and suavely so that the Negroes themselves sometimes doubt
the evidence of their own senses: segregation, disfranchise¬
ment, trial without jury, over-taxation, “Jim Crow” cars, neg¬
lect of education, economic serfdom. Yet all this can be and
is technically denied. Segregation? “Oh no,” says the colonial
official, “anyone can live where he will — only that beautiful
and cool side of the mountain with fine roads, golf and tennis
and bungalows is assigned to government officials.” Are there
black officials? “Oh yes, and they can be assigned residences
there, too.” But they never have been. The Negroes vote
and hold office in Freetown — I met the comely black and cul¬
tured mayor — but Freetown has almost no revenues and its
powers have been gradually absorbed by the autocratic white
colonial government which has five million dollars a year to
spend. Any government prosecutor can abolish trial by jury
in any case with the consent of the judge, and all judges are
white. White officials ride in special railway carriages and I
am morally certain — I cannot prove it — that more is spent by
the government on tennis and golf in the colony than on
popular education.

These things, and powerful efforts of English industry to
reap every penny of profit for England in colonial trade, leav¬
ing the black inhabitants in helpless serfdom, have aroused
West Africa, and aroused it at this time because of two things
— the war, and cocoa in Nigeria. The burden of war fell hard
on black and British West Africa. Their troops conquered
German Africa for England and France at bitter cost and
helped hold back the Turk. Yet there was not a single black
officer in the British army or a single real reward save citations
and new and drastic taxation even on exports.

But British West Africa had certain advantages. After the
decline of the slave trade and before the discovery that slavery
and serfdom in Africa could be made to pay more than the re¬
moval of the laboring forces to other parts of the world, there
was a disposition to give over to the natives the black colonies

WORLDS OF COLOR 399

on the fever coast and the British Government announced the
intention of gradually preparing West Africans for self-gov¬
ernment. Missionary education and the sending of black stu¬
dents to England raised a small Negro intelligentsia which
long struggled to place itself at the head of affairs. It had
some success but lacked an economic foundation. When the
new industrial imperialism swept Africa, with England in the
lead, the presence of these educated black leaders was a thorn
in the flesh of the new English industrialists. Their method
was to crowd these leaders aside into narrower and narrower
confines as we have seen in Sierre Leone. But the Negroes in
the older colonies retained possession of their land and, sud¬
denly, when the cocoa industry was transferred from Portu¬
guese Africa, they gained in one or two colonies a new and
undreamed of economic foundation. Instead of following the
large plantation industry, cocoa became the product of the small
individual native farm. In 1891 a native sold eighty pounds
of the first cocoa raised on the Gold Coast. By 1 9 1 1 this had
increased to 45,000 tons and in 1916 to 72,000 tons. In
Nigeria there has also been a large increase, making these
colonies to-day the greatest cocoa producing countries in the
world.

Moreover, this progress showed again the new democratic
problems of colonization, since it began and was fostered by a
certain type of white colonial official who was interested in the
black man and wanted him to develop. But this official was
interested in the primitive black and not in the educated black.
He feared and despised the educated West African and did
not believe him capable of leading his primitive brother. He
sowed seeds of dissension between the two. On the other hand,
the educated West African hated the white colonial leader as
a supplanter and deceiver whose ultimate aims must be selfish
and wrong j and as ever, between these two, the English ex¬
ploiting company worked gradually its perfect will.

Determined effort was thus made by the English, both mer¬
chants and philanthropists, to cut the natives off from any union
of forces or of interests with the educated West Africans.
“Protectorates” under autocratic white rule were attached to

4oo THE 2(EW ZiEGRO

the colonies and the natives in the protectorates were threatened
loss of land, given almost no education and left to the
mercy of a white colonial staff whose chief duty gradually came
to be the encouragement of profitable industry for the great
companies. These companies were represented in the govern¬
ing councils, they influenced appointments at home and espe¬
cially they spread in England a carefully prepared propaganda
which represented the educated “nigger” as a bumptious, un¬
reasoning fool in a silk hat, while the untutored and unspoiled
native under white control was nature’s original nobleman.
Also they suggested that this “white” control must not admit

too many visionaries and idealists.

This policy has not been altogether successful, for the edu¬
cated Negro is appealing to English democracy and the native
is beginning to seek educated black leadership. After many
vicissitudes, in 1920 a Congress of West Africa was assembled
on the Gold Coast, and from this a delegation was sent to
London “to lay before His Majesty the King in. Council
through the colonial ministry certain grievances.” This was an
epoch-making effort and, as was natural, the Colonial Office,
where imperial industry is entrenched, refused to recognize
the delegation, claiming that they did not really represent
black West Africa. Nevertheless, through the League of Na¬
tions Union and the public press this delegation succeeded in
putting its case before the world. They described themselves
as “of that particular class of peaceful citizens who, apprehen¬
sive of the culminating danger resulting from the present
political unrest in West Africa — an unrest which is silently
moving throughout the length and breadth of that continent
and also appreciating the fact that the present system of ad¬
ministration will inevitably lead to a serious deadlock between
the ‘Government and the Governed,’ decided to set them¬
selves to the task of ameliorating this pending disaster by put
ting forward constitutionally a program, the carrying of
which into operation will alleviate all pains and misgivings.”

The final resolutions of the Congress said, “that in the opin¬
ion of this Conference the time has arrived for a change in
the Constitution of several British West African colonies, so

WORLDS OF COLOR 401

as to give the people an effective voice in their affairs both in
the Legislative and Municipal Governments, and that the Con¬
ference pledges itself to submit proposals for such reforms.”

The reasons for this demand are thus described:

“In the demand for the franchise by the people of British
West Africa, it is not to be supposed that they are asking to be
allowed to copy a foreign institution. On the contrary, it is im¬
portant to notice that the principle of electing representatives
to local councils and bodies is inherent in all the systems of
British West Africa. . . . From the foregoing it is obvious
that a system by which the Governor of a Crown Colony nomi¬
nates whom he thinks proper to represent the people is con¬
sidered by them as a great anomaly and constitutes a grievance
and a disability which they now request should be remedied.”

Never before has black Britain spoken so clearly or so
cogently. For the most part the African population of the
empire has been silent.

Since the war not only has West Africa thus spoken but
the colored West Indies have complained. They want Home
Rule and they are demanding it. They asked after the war:
Why was it that no black man sat in the Imperial Conference?
Why is it that one of the oldest parts of the empire lingers in
political serfdom to England and industrial bondage to Amer¬
ica? Why is there not a great British West Indian Federa¬
tion, stretching from Bermuda to Honduras and Guiana, and
ranking with the free dominions? The answer was clear and
concise — Color.

In 1916a new agitation for representative government began
in Granada. The fire spread to all the West Indies and in
1921 a delegation was received by the Colonial Office in Lon¬
don at the same time that the Second Pan-African Congress
was in session.

Here were unusual appeals to English democracy — appeals
that not even commercial propaganda could wholly hush. But
there was a force that curiously counteracted them. Liberal
England, wanting world peace and fearing French militarism,
backed by the English thrift that is interested in the restored
economic equilibrium, found as one of its most prominent

402 THE 2iEW J^EGRO

spokesmen Jan Smuts of South Africa, and Jan Smuts stands
for the suppression of the blacks.

Jan Smuts is to-day, in his world aspects, the greatest pro¬
tagonist of the white race. He is fighting to take control of
Laurengo Marques from a nation that recognizes, even though
it does not realize, the equality of black folk; he is fighting to
keep India from political and social equality in the empire; he
is fighting to insure the continued and eternal subordination of
black to white in Africa; and he is fighting for peace and good
will in a white Europe which can by union present a united
front to the yellow, brown and black worlds. In all this he
expresses bluntly, and yet not without finesse, what a powerful
host of white folk believe but do not plainly say in Melbourne,
New Orleans, San Francisco, Hongkong, Berlin, and London.

The words of Smuts in the recent Imperial Conference were
transcribed as follows: “The tendencies in South Africa, just
as elsewhere, were all democratic. If there was to be equal
manhood suffrage over the Union, the whites would be
swamped by the blacks. A distinction could not be made be¬
tween Indians and Africans. They would be impelled by the
inevitable force of logic to go the whole hog, and the result
would be that not only would the whites be swamped in Natal
by the Indians but the whites would be swamped all over South
Africa by the blacks and the whole position for which the
whites had striven for two hundred years or more now would
be given up. So far as South Africa was concerned, there¬
fore, it was a question of impossibility. For white South
Africa it was not a question of dignity but a question of exist¬
ence.”

Back of all these attitudes is Fear. Back of the whole
British Imperial Conference was fear. The worlds of color
to-day are curiously and nicely balanced — a little push here,
a little yielding there and the end of the vast resulting move¬
ments may be anything. The dominating thing in that Con¬
ference was the fear of the colored world.

This almost naive setting of the darker races beyond the
pale of democracy and of modern humanity was listened to
with sympathetic attention in England. It is without doubt

WORLDS OF COLOR 403

to-day the dominant policy of the British Empire. Can this
policy be carried out? It involves two things — acquiescence
of the darker peoples and agreement between capital and labor
in white democracies.

This agreement between capital and labor in regard to col¬
ored folk cannot be depended on. First of all, no sooner is
colored labor duly subordinate, voiceless in government, effi¬
cient for the purpose and cheap, than the division of the re¬
sultant profit is a matter of dispute. This is the case even in
South Africa and it came as a singular answer to Smuts. In
South Africa white labor is highly paid, can vote, and by a sys¬
tem of black helpers occupies an easy and powerful position. It
can only retain this position by vigorously excluding blacks
from certain occupations and by beating their wages down to
the lowest point even when as helpers they are really doing the
prohibited work. It is to the manifest interest of capitalists
and investors to breach if not overthrow this caste wall and
thus secure higher profits by cheaper and more pliable labor.
Already South African courts are slowly moving toward miti¬
gating the law of labor caste and in retaliation the white
labor unions have joined Smuts’ political enemies, the Eng-
lish-hating Boer party of independence, and have overthrown
the great premier.

But how curious are these bedfellows — English capital and
African black labor against Dutch home-rulers and the trades
unions. The combinations are as illogical as they are thought-
producing, for after all if South Africa is really bent on inde¬
pendence she must make economic and political peace with
the blacks ; and if she hates Negroes more than she hates low
wages she must submit even more than now to English rule.

Now what is English rule over colored folk destined to be?
Here comes the second puzzling result of the Smuts philoso¬
phy. I was in London on the night of the Guild Hall banquet
when the Prime Minister spoke on “Empire Policy and World
Peace” and gave a sort of summing up of the work of the
Imperial Conference. It was significant that in the forefront
of his words, cheek by jowl with Imperial “foreign policy,”
stood the “intensity of feeling in India on the question of the

404 THE EW EGRO

status of British Indians in the Empire.” What indeed could
be more fundamental than this in the building of world
peace? Are the brown Indians to share equally in the ruling
of the British Empire or are they an inferior race? And cu¬
riously enough, the battle on this point is impending not simply
in the unchecked movement toward “swaraj” in India but in
Africa — in the Union of South Africa and in Kenya.

In South Africa, despite all Imperial explanations and at¬
tempts to smooth things out, Smuts and the Boers have taken
firm ground: Indians are to be classed with Negroes in their
social and political exclusion. South Africa is to be ruled by
its minority of whites. But if this is blunt and unswerving,
how much more startling is Kenya. Kenya is the British East
Africa of pre-war days and extends from the Indian Ocean
to the Victoria Nyanza and from German East Africa to
Ethiopia. It is that great roof of the African world where,
beneath the silver heads of the Mountains of the Moon, came
down in ancient days those waters and races which founded
Egypt. The descendant races still live there with fine physique
and noble heads — the Masai warriors whom Schweinfurth
heralded, the Dinka, the Galla, and Nile Negroes — the herds¬
men and primitive artisans of the beautiful highlands. Here
was a land largely untainted by the fevers of the tropics and
here England proposed to send her sick and impoverished
soldiers of the war. Following the lead of South Africa, she
took over five million, acres of the best lands from the
000 natives, herded them gradually toward the swamps and
gave them, even there, no sure title; then by taxation she
forced sixty per cent of the black adults into working for the
ten thousand white owners for the lowest wage. Here was
opportunity not simply for the great landholder and slave-
driver but also for the small trader, and twenty-four thou¬
sand Indians came. These Indians claimed the rights of free
subjects of the empire — a right to buy land, a right to exploit
labor, a right to a voice in the government now confined to
the handful of whites.

Suddenly a great race conflict swept East Africa — orient and
Occident, white, brown and black, landlord, trader and landless

WORLDS OF COLOR 405

serf. When the Indians asked rights, the whites replied that
this would injure the rights of the natives. Immediately the
natives began to awake. Few of them were educated but they
began to form societies and formulate grievances. A black
political consciousness arose for the first time in Kenya. Imme¬
diately the Indians made a bid for the support of this new
force and asked rights and privileges for all British subjects —
white, brown and black. As the Indian pressed his case, white
South Africa rose in alarm. If the Indian became a recog¬
nized man, landholder and voter in Kenya, what of Natal?

The British Government speculated and procrastinated and
then announced its decision: East Africa was primarily a
“trusteeship” for the Africans and not for the Indians. The
Indians, then, must be satisfied with limited industrial and
political rights, while for the black native — the white English¬
man spoke! A conservative Indian leader, speaking in Eng¬
land after this decision, said that if the Indian problem in
South Africa were allowed to fester much longer it would pass
beyond the bounds of domestic issue and would become a ques¬
tion of foreign policy upon which the unity of the Empire
might founder irretrievably. The Empire could never keep
its colored races within it by force, he said, but only by pre¬
serving and safeguarding their sentiments.

Perhaps this shrewd Kenya decision was too shrewd. It pre¬
served white control of Kenya but it said in effect: “Africa
for the Africans!” What then about Uganda and the Sudan,
where a black leadership exists under ancient forms ; and,
above all, what about the educated black leadership in the
West Indies and West Africa? Why should black West
Africa with its industrial triumphs like Nigeria be content
forever with a Crown Government, if Africa is for the Afri¬
cans?

The result has been a yielding by England to the darker
world — not a yielding of much, but yielding. India is to have
a revision of the impossible “diarachy”; all West Africa is to
have a small elective element in its governing councils ; and
even the far West Indies have been visited by a colonial under¬
secretary and parliamentary committee, the first of its kind in

4o 6 THE 2(EW C^EGRO

the long history of the islands. Their report is worth quoting
in part: aSeveral reasons combine to make it likely that the
common demand for a measure of representative government
will in the long run prove irresistible. The wave of demo¬
cratic sentiment has been powerfully stimulated by the war.
Education is rapidly spreading and tending to produce a col¬
ored and black intelligentsia of which the members are quick
to absorb elements of knowledge requisite for entry into
learned professions and return from travel abroad with minds
emancipated and enlarged, ready to devote time and energy
to propaganda among their own people.”

Egypt too is Africa and the Bilad-es-Sudan, Land of the
Blacks, has in its eastern reaches belonged to Egypt ever since
Egypt belonged to the Sudan — ever since the Pharaohs bowed
to the Lords of Meroe. Fifty times England has promised
freedom and independence to Egypt and to-day she keeps her
word by seizing the Sudan with a million square miles, six mil¬
lion black folk and twenty million dollars of annual revenue.
But Egypt without the Sudan can never be free and independent
and this England well knows, but she will hold the Sudan
against Egypt as “trustee” for the blacks. That was a fateful
step that the new Conservatives took after the Sirdar was mur¬
dered by hot revolutionists. Its echo will long haunt the world.

If now England is literally forced to yield some measure of
self-government to her darker colonies if France remains
steadfast in the way in which her feet seem to be tending ; if
Asia arises from the dead and can no longer be rendered im¬
potent by the opium of international finance, what will happen
to imperialistic world industry as exemplified in the great ex¬
pansion of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

LABOR IN THE SHADOWS

This is the question that faces the new labor parties of the
world — the new political organizations which are determined to
force a larger measure of democracy in industry than now
obtains. The trade union labor movement dominant in Aus¬
tralia, South Africa and the United States has been hitherto

WORLDS OF COLOR 407

autocratic and at heart capitalistic, believing in profit-making
industry and wishing only to secure a larger share of profits for
particular guilds. But the larger labor movement following
the war envisages through democratic political action real
democratic power of the mass of workers in industry and com¬
merce. Two questions here arise: Will the new labor parties
welcome the darker race to this industrial democracy? And,
if they do, how will this affect industry?

The attitude of the white laborer toward colored folk is
largely a matter of long continued propaganda and gossip.
The white laborers can read and write, but beyond this their
education and experience are limited and they live in a world
of color prejudice. The curious, most childish propaganda
dominates us, by which good, earnest, even intelligent men
have come by millions to believe almost religiously that white
folk are a peculiar and chosen people whose one great accom¬
plishment is civilization and that civilization must be protected
from the rest of the world by cheating, stealing, lying, and
murder. The propaganda, the terrible, ceaseless propaganda
that buttresses this belief day by day — the propaganda of poet
and novelist, the uncanny welter of romance, the half knowl¬
edge of scientists, the pseudo-science of statesmen — all these,
united in the myth of mass inferiority of most men, have built
a wall which many centuries will not break down. Born into
such a spiritual world, the average white worker is absolutely
at the mercy of its beliefs and prejudices. Color hate easily
assumes the form of a religion and the laborer becomes the
blind executive of the decrees of the masters of the white
world ; he votes armies and navies for “punitive” expedi¬
tions ; he sends his sons as soldiers and sailors ; he composes
the Negro-hating mob, demands Japanese exclusion and
lynches untried prisoners. What hope is there that such a
mass of dimly thinking and misled men will ever demand uni¬
versal democracy for all men?

The chief hope lies in the gradual but inevitable spread of
the knowledge that the denial of democracy in Asia and
Africa hinders its complete realization in Europe. It is this
that makes the Color Problem and the Labor Problem to so

408 THE y(EW O^EGRO

great an extent two sides of the same human tangle. How far
does white labor see this? Not far, as yet. Its attitude toward
colored labor varies from the Russian extreme to the extreme
in South Africa and Australia. Russia has been seeking a
ra'p'prochement with colored labor. She is making her peace
with China and Japan. Her leaders have come in close touch
with the leaders of India. Claude McKay, an American Negro
poet travelling in Russia, declares: “Lenin himself grappled
with the question of the American Negroes and spoke on the
subject before the Second Congress of the Third Interna¬
tional. He consulted with John Reed, the American journal¬
ist, and dwelt on the urgent necessity of propaganda and or¬
ganization work among the Negroes of the South.”

Between these extremes waver the white workers of the
rest of the world. On the whole they still lean rather toward
the attitude of South Africa than that of Russia. They exclude
colored labor from empty Australia. They sit in armed truce
against them in America where the Negroes are forcing their
way into ranks of union labor by breaking strikes and under¬
bidding them in wage.

It is precisely by these tactics, however, and by hindering
the natural flow of labor toward the highest wage and the
best conditions in the world that white labor is segregating col¬
ored labor in just those parts of the world where it can be
most easily exploited by white capital and thus giving white
capital the power to rule all labor, white and black, in the
rest of the world. White labor is beginning dimly to see this.
Colored labor knows it, and as colored labor becomes more
organized and more intelligent it is going to spread this griev¬
ance through the white world.

THE SHADOW OF SHADOWS

How much intelligent organization is there for this purpose
on the part of the colored world? So far there is very little.
For while the colored people of to-day are common victims of
white culture, there is a vast gulf between the red-black South
and the yellow-brown East. In the East long since, centuries

409

WORLDS OF COLOR

ago, there were mastered a technique and philosophy which
still stand among the greatest the world has known ; and the
black and African South, beginning in the dim dawn of time
when beginnings were everything, have evolved a physique
and an art, a will to be and to enjoy, which the world has
never done without and never can. But these cultures have
little in common, either to-day or yesterday, and are being
pounded together artificially and not attracting each other
naturally. And yet quickened India, the South and West
African Congresses, the Pan- African movement, the National
Association for the advancement of Colored People in Amer¬
ica, together with rising China and risen Japan — all these at
no distant day may come to common consciousness of aim and
be able to give to the labor parties of the world a message that
they will understand.

After all, the darker world realizes the industrial triumphs
of white Europe — its labor-saving devices, its harnessing of
vast radical forces, its conquest of time and space by goods-
production, railway, telephone, telegraph and flying machine, it
sees how the world might enjoy these things and how it does
not, how it is enslaved by its own ingenuity, mechanized by its
own machinery. It sees Western civilization spiritually bank¬
rupt and unhappy.

Africa is happy. The masses of its black folk are calmly
contented, save where what is called “European” civilization
has touched and uprooted them. They have a philosophy of
life logical and realizable. Their children are carefully edu¬
cated for the life they are to lead. There are no prostitutes,
there is no poverty. In Asia too (although here I speak by
hearsay, knowing Asiatics but not Asia) there is, over vast
spiritual areas, peace and self-realization ; a certain complete¬
ness of individual life j a worship of beauty even among the
masses ; adequate handling of matter for certain personal ends
and satisfactions, and a religious spirit which is neither hypo¬
critical nor unbelieving. On the other hand x^frica and Asia
have no command of technique or mastery of physical force
that can compare with that of the West; they know practi¬
cally nothing of mass-time production and their knowledge

4io

THE O^EW y(EGR0

of the facts of the universe is far behind modern knowledge.

That comfort is necessary to complete human happiness, who
can for a moment doubt? But what shall the world pay for
this completeness — what is it paying now? First of all, it
has in the heyday of its triumph been able or willing to supply
comfort but to a minority of its own population. The majority
of the whole people of Europe have poor food, inadequate
clothing, bad shelter, inadequate amusement and misleading
education. They are more comfortable than the African sav¬
ages only in their water supply, their foods and their oppor¬
tunity to look at brilliantly lighted streets.

To save then this efficient organization of work, this syn¬
chronization of human industrial effort the like of which the
world never before saw — to save this, and led by the idea that
at all hazards it must be saved, white Western Europe has long
been united in a determination to make the colored worlds
contribute to its comfort, subordinate themselves to its interests,
become part of its machine. It argues that on this path alone
lies salvation for the lazy South and the sleepy East; that
upon them lies the salvation of the world; and they ignore with
perfect ignorance the possibility that lazy enjoyment and silent
contemplation of life, without a surplus or even a sufficiency
of modern comfort may for a moment be held an end and
ideal of existence; or that the efficient West and North can
learn of the lazy South and sleepy East.

If now the world, and particularly the laboring world,
should come to realize that industrial efficiency as measured by
the amount of goods made and the size of the private profit de¬
rived therefrom is not the greatest thing in the world; and that
by exchanging European efficiency for African leisure and
Asiatic contemplation they might gain tremendously in happi¬
ness, the world might be less afraid to give up economic imper¬
ialism. Moreover, future economic imperialism can only be
held together by militarism. Militarism is costly and to in¬
creasing masses of men since the Great War, hateful; more than
this — the darker world is held in subjection to Europe by its
own darker soldiers. Africa is owned and held almost entirely
by Europe; but at the same time Africa is held and kept in

The School Teachers

WORLDS OF COLOR 411

subjection to Europe by black troops; black troops in the Su¬
dan, black troops in French Africa, black troops in British
West Africa, black troops in Belgian Congo, black troops in
Italian Africa, black troops in Kenya, in Uganda, and in for¬
mer German Africa. Mutual jealousies, widespread ignorance,
tribal hatreds and red uniforms make this to-day a most effec¬
tive method of military control. But for how manv years can
this be depended upon? Indian soldiers hold India in sub¬
jection to England and France. They cannot always be ex¬
pected to do this. Some day they are bound to awake.

Above all this rises the shadow of two international groups
— the Jews and the modern Negroes. The Jews are, in blood,
Spanish, German, French, Arabian and American. Their an¬
cient unity of religious faith is crumbling, but out of it all
has come a spiritual unity born of suffering, prejudice and
industrial power which can be used and is being used to spread
an international consciousness. Where this spirit encounters
a rampant new nationalism as in Poland or bitter memories of
national loss as in Germany, or racial bigotry as in America, it
stirs an Anti-Semitism as cruel as it is indefinite and armed in
fact not against an abused race but against any spirit that works
or seems to work for the union of human kind.

And toward this same great end a new group of groups is
setting its face. Pan-Africanism as a living movement, a
tangible accomplishment, is a little and negligible thing. But
there are twenty-three millions of Negroes in British West
Africa, eighteen millions in French Africa, eleven millions and
more in the United States; between eight and nine millions
each in the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Africa; and a dozen
other lands in Africa and America have groups ranging from
two to five millions. This hundred and fifty millions of peo¬
ple are gaining slowly an intelligent thoughtful leadership.
The main seat of their leadership is to-day the United States.

In the United States there are certain unheralded indications
of development in the Negro problem. One is the fact that
for the first time in America, the American Negro is to-day
universally recognized as capable of speaking for himself. To
realize the significance of this one has but to remember that

412 THE TiEW NiEGRO

less than twenty-five years ago a conference of friends of the
Negro could meet at Lake Mohonk to discuss his problems
without a single Negro present. And even later than that,
great magazines could publish symposiums on the “Negro”
problem without thinking of inviting a single Negro to par¬
ticipate. Again, a revolution is happening under our eyes with
regard to lynching. For forty years, not less than a Negro a
week and sometimes as many as five a week have been lynched
in order to enforce race inferiority by terrorism. Suddenly
this number in 1923 was cut in half and it looks as though the
record of 1924 was going to be not more than one Negro
lynched each month and all this was due primarily to the
tremendous onslaught of the National Association for the Ad¬
vancement of Colored People against lynching and their
broad-casting of the facts.

Finally and just as important is the new national policy as to
immigration, born of war. This policy is seemingly a tre¬
mendous triumph of the “Nordics” and not only cuts down the
foreign immigration to the United States from 1,000,000 a
year to 160,000, but also seeks to exclude the Latins and Jews
and openly to insult Asiatics. Now despite the inhumanity of
this, American Negroes are silently elated at this policy. As
long as the northern lords of industry could import cheap,
white labor from Europe they could encourage the color line in
industry and leave the Negroes as peons and serfs at the mercy
of the white South. But to-day with the cutting down of
foreign immigration the Negro becomes the best source of cheap
labor for the industries of the white land. The bidding for
his services gives him a tremendous sword to wield against
the Bourbon South and by means of wholesale migration he
is wielding it. But note again the extraordinary bed fellows
involved in this paradox ; Negro laborers, white capitalists
and “Nordic” fanatics against Latin Europe, Southern task
masters, labor unions, the Jews and Japanese!

Led by American Negroes, the Negroes of the world are
reaching out hands toward each other to know, to sympathize,
to inquire. There are few countries without their few Ne¬
groes, few great cities without its groups, and thus with this

4i3

WORLDS OF COLOR

great human force, spread out as it is in all lands and languages,
the world must one day reckon. We face, then, in the modern
black American, the black West Indian, the black Frenchman,
the black Portuguese, the black Spaniard and the black Afri¬
can a man gaining in knowledge and power and in the definite
aim to end color slavery and give black folk a knowledge of
modern culture.

There are those who see in the movement only danger — only
the silly agitation of would-be fomenters of trouble. They
discount it, laugh at it and secretly and openly obstruct it.
When the Pan-African Congress planned to meet in Brussels
all the industrial exploiters of the Belgian Congo united to mis¬
represent its objects, distort its actions and punish its local
supporters. When the same Congress met in France strong
pressure was exerted to keep it from any interference with the
investments of French capital in Africa. When the Congress
met in England it was dubbed “French” in sympathy and an¬
archistic in tendency. And yet slowly but surely the move¬
ment grows and the day faintly dawns when the new force for
international understanding and racial readjustment will and
must be felt.

To some persons — to more human beings than ever before
at one time in the world’s history, there came during the Great
War, during those terrible years of 1917 and 1918, a vision of
the Glory of Sacrifice, a dream of a world greater, sweeter,
more beautiful and more honest than ever before $ a world
without war, without poverty and without hate.

I am glad it came. Even though it was a mirage it was
eternally true. To-day some faint shadow of it comes to me
again.

My ship seeks Africa. Ten days we crept across the At¬
lantic ; five days we sail to the Canaries. And then turning
we sought the curve of that mighty and fateful shoulder of
gigantic Africa. Slowly, slowly we creep down the coast in
a little German cargo boat. Yonder behind the horizon is
Cape Bojador whence in 1441 came the brown Moors and
black Moors who through the slave trade built America and

4i4 THE R^EW C^EGRO

modern commerce and let loose the furies of the world. An¬
other day afar we glide past Dakar, city and center of French
Senegal. Thereupon we fall down, down to the burning
equator past the Guinea and Gambia, to where the Lion moun¬
tain glares, toward the vast gulf whose sides are lined with
Silver and Gold and Ivory. And now we stand before
Liberia; Liberia that is a little thing set upon a Hill; — thirty
or forty thousand square miles and two million folk; but it
represents to me the world. Here political power has tried to
resist the power of modern capital. It has not yet succeeded,
but its partial failure is not because the republic is black, but
because the world has failed in this same battle; because or¬
ganized industry owns and rules England, France, Germany,
America and Heaven. And can Liberia escape the power that
rules the world? I do not know; but I do know unless the
world escapes, the world as well as Liberia will die; and if
Liberia lives it will be because the World is reborn as in that
vision splendid of 1918.

And thus again in 1924 as in 1899 I seem to see the problem
of the 20th century as the Problem of the Color Line.

WHO’S WHO OF THE CONTRIBUTORS

Locke, Alain: editor and contributor, The New Negro, Negro Youth Speaks ,
The Negro Spirituals, The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts; born Philadelphia,
Pa., September 13, 1886; educated at Philadelphia public schools; Harvard
College, A.B., 1907; graduate study, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar from
Pennsylvania), 1907-10; University of Berlin, 1910-11; Harvard University,
Ph D., 1918; Assistant Professor and Professor of Philosophy, Howard Uni¬
versity, Washington, D. C., 1912-25. Author: Race Contacts and Inter¬
racial Relations, 1916, and numerous articles on social problems and belles
lettres. Editor, Harlem Number, Survey Graphic, March, 1925.

Barnes, Albert C.: Negro Art and America; bom Philadelphia, Pa.; educated at
Central High School, Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Uni¬
versity of Heidelberg, M.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1892, art collector
and connoisseur, and founder of the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pa. Editor
of the Journal of the Barnes Foundation, co-editor of Les Arts a Paris, and
author of the Art of Painting, Barnes Foundation Press, 1924.

Braithwaite, William Stanley: The Negro in American Literature ; bom Bos¬
ton, 1878; educated at public schools of Boston and Newport; poet, journalist,
editor, and pioneer anthologist of contemporary American poetry. Author:
Lyrics of Life, The House of Falling Leaves, The Poetic Year, The Story
of the Great War. Compiler of The Book of Elizabethan Verse, The Book
of Georgian Verse, The Book of Restoration Verse. Contributing editor, the
Boston Transcript; Spingarn Medallist, 1918.

Fisher, Rudolph: The City, of Refuge and Vestiges; born Washington, D. C.,
1897 ; educated at public schools of New York and Providence, R. I.,
Brown University, A.B. and A.M., 1920 (Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Sigma
Rho, and Sigma XI) ; Howard University Medical School, M.D., 1924. Has
published short stories in the Atlantic Monthly, Survey Graphic, and The
Crisis. First story prize winner in the Amy Spingarn Prize Contest for 1925.

Toomer, Jean: Carma-Fern, from “Cane”; born Washington, D. C., 1894; edu¬
cated at public schools and Dunbar High, Washington ; after a varied
experience of travel, taught four months at Sparta, Ga. ; since then has lived
in New York. Frequent contributor to The Little Review, Secession, The
Double Dealer, Broom, Opportunity, and The Crisis. Author: “Cane,” a
novel, 1923.

Matheus, John F.: Fog; bom Keyser, W. Va.; educated at the public schools,
Steubenville, O., Western Reserve University, A.B., 1910, Columbia University,
A.M., 1921; teacher of languages, Florida A. & M. College, Tallahassie, 1910-22,
since 1922 Professor of Romance Languages, West Virginia Collegiate Institute.

Hurston, Zora Neale: Spunk; born Jacksonville, Fla.; educated at Baltimore,
Md., Morgan Preparatory, and Howard University; journalism and writing
in New York. Spunk was the second prize story in the 1925 Opportunity
Literary Contest.

Walrond, Eric D.: The Palm Porch; born British Guiana, 1898; educated at
St. Stephen’s Boys’ School, Black Rock, Barbadoes, later Canal Zone public
schools, and three years, 1913-16, under private tutors in Colon; employed
Health Department, Cristobal, and as reporter of the Star and Herald ,

415

■BIBLIOGRAPHY

416

1916-18; came to New York in 1918; spent three years at the College of
the City of New York and one year as special student at Columbia Uni¬
versity; has served variously as stenographer in the British Recruiting Mission.
Associate Editor, the Brooklyn and Long Island Informer and later The
Negro World, and is now Business Manager of Opportunity. Contributor
of reviews, stories and articles, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Smart
Set, the Saturday Review of Literature, Current History, The Independent,
Opportunity, etc.

Nugent, Bruce: Sahdji; born Washington, D. C., 1905; educated at public
schools and high school, Washington; art student.

Cullen, Countee P.: Selected Poems and Heritage; bom New York City, 1903;
educated at New York public schools; De Witt Clinton High, New York
University, A.B., 1925 (Phi Beta Kappa) A.M., Harvard, 1926; winner of
numerous poetry prize contests; has contributed verse to Harpers, The
Nation, The American Mercury, Scribner's, Survey Graphic, The Crisis,
Opportunity, Folio, etc. Author: Color, Harper & Brothers, 1925.

McKay, Claude: Selected Poems; born Jamaica, 1889, early education there;
served in the Kingston Constabulary; came to United States in 1912; two
years student of agriculture at Kansas State University ; since then has fol¬
lowed journalism and writing; visited Russia in 1921; and has since lived
abroad in Germany and prance; formerly associate editor, The Liberator
and The Masses; contributor to these, The Seven Arts, The Crisis, etc.
Author: Songs of Jamaica, Spring in New Hampshire (London), Harlem
Shadows, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922.

Grimke, Angelina W.: The Black Finger; born Boston, Mass., 1880; educated in
private academies and Boston Latin and Normal School, since 1916; teacher
of English, Dunbar High School, Washington, D. C. Contributor of verse and
essays to numerous magazines. Author of Rachel, Comhill Co., 1920.

Spencer, Anne: Selected Poems; bom Bramwell, W. Va., 1882; educated at
Virginia Seminary, Lynchburg, Va., where she now resides; engaged in writing
and social work.

Bontemps, Arna. The Day-Breakers; born Alexandria, La., 1902; educated public
schools Los Angeles, Cal., the University of California and Pacific Union
College, 1920-23; A.B., 1923, Pacific Union College; now teaching Harlem
Academy, New York City. Contributor to Opportunity, The Crisis, Palms,
and other magazines.

Johnson, Georgia Douglas: Selected Poems; bom Atlanta, Ga., 1886; educated
at Atlanta High School and Oberlin College; contributor to Liberator, The
Worker’s Monthly, The Crisis, and Opportunity. Author: The Heart of a
Woman and Other Poems, 1918, Bronze, a Book of Verse, Brimmer, 1922.

Alexander, Lewis: Enchantment; born Washington, D. C., 1898; educated at
public schools and Dunbar High and Howard University; acted in the
Ethiopian Art Theatre Company; member Playwriters’ Circle and Ira Al¬
dridge Players.

Hughes, Langston: Selected Poems and Jazzonia; born Joplin, Mo., 1902;
educated at Lawrence, Kansas and Cleveland High School, Ohio; spent one
year at Columbia University ; since then has travelled extensively in Africa and
Europe “on his own and for the sake of experience.” Contributor, The
Crisis, The Worker’s Monthly, Vanity Fair, Opportunity. Author: The
Weary Blues, a volume of verse. Alfred Knopf, 1925.

Gregory, Montgomery: The Drama of Negro Life; bom Washington, D. C.,
1888; educated at Harvard College, A.B., 1910; Instructor, Assistant Pro¬
fessor and Professor of English, Howard University, 1911-24; Organizer and
Director of the Howard Players, 1919-24, now supervisor of Negro Schools,
Atlantic City, N. J.

: BIBLIOGRAPHY

417

Fauset, Jessie Redmon: The Gift of Laughter; born at Philadelphia, Pa.; edu¬
cated in the Philadelphia public schools, Cornell University, A.B., 1905 (Phi
Beta Kappa), University of Pennsylvania, A.M., 1921; special courses at the
Sorbonne; teacher of French and Latin, Dunbar High School, Washington;
Literary Editor of The Crisis, 1920-26. Author of numerous magazine
articles, verse and stories; also There is Confusion, a novel, Boni & Liveright,
1924.

Richardson, Willis: Compromise ; born Wilmington, N. C., 1889; educated at
public schools and Dunbar High School, Washington, D. C.; now engaged
in the government clerical service; since 1917 has written numerous one act
and larger plays, of which the following have been produced: The Deacon’s
Awakening, St. Paul, 1921; The Chip Woman’s Fortune, by the Chicago
Folk Theatre, 1923; Mortgaged, by the Howard Players, 1924, and The
Broken Banjo, the Amy Spingarn Prize Play in New York, 1925. Has con¬
tributed articles on Negro Drama to Opportunity and The Crisis.

Rogers, James A.: Jazz at Home; journalist and correspondent, on staff of
The Messenger and The Amsterdam News, New York. Author: numerous
articles and From Superman to Man, Chicago, 1917.

Schomburg, Arthur A.: The Negro Digs Up His Past; born San Juan, Porto
Rico; educated public and private schools, and St. Thomas College; came to
the United States in 1891, and has since been engaged as law clerk and in
business. Author and book collector; president of the American Negro
Academy; co-founder of the Negro Society for Historical Research. Author:
Phyllis Wheatley, a critical edition, Fred Heartman, New York, 1916; A
Check List of American Negro Poetry, New York, 1916, and numerous his¬
torical pamphlets and reprints.

Fauset, Arthur Huff: American Negro Folk Lore; bom Flemington, N. J.,
1899; educated at Philadelphia public schools, the Central High School and
the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, A.B., University of Pennsylvania, 1921,
A.M., ibid., 1924; has taught since 1918 in the Philadelphia public schools,
and has specialized in the study of folk lore, making a research of Nova
Scotia folk lore under the auspices of the American Folk Lore Society, 1923,
and one in the lower South, especially the Mississippi Delta Region, in the
summer of 1925.

Bennett, Gwendolyn B.: Song; bom Giddings, Texas; studied at Pratt Insti¬
tute and Columbia University; taught Design and Water Color at Howard
University in Washington, D. C.; Delta Sigma Theta Fellowship to Paris
for 1925-26. Contributor to Opportunity, The Crisis and The Messenger.

PART II

Kellogg, Paul Underwood: The Negro Pioneers; bom Kalamazoo, Mich., 1879;
graduate Kalamazoo High School; special courses Columbia University,
1901-06; Hon. A.M. Amherst, 1911; city editor Kalamazoo Daily Telegraph,
1898-1901; on staff The Survey since 1902; since 1912 editor The Survey
and the Survey Graphic; director The Pittsburgh Survey, 1907-08. Editor,
Pittsburgh Survey. Joint author with Arthur Gleason, British Labor and the
War, 1918.

Johnson, Charles S.: The New Frontage on American Life; bom Bristol, Va.,
1898; A.B. Virginia Union University, 1916; Ph.B. University of Chicago,
1917, graduate study in social science in Chicago while research investigator
of the Chicago Urban League, Associate Executive Secretary of the Chicago
Race Relations Commission, compiled material and wrote sections of their
report, “The Negro in Chicago,” 1921, since 1921, director of Research and

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

418

Publicity, National Urban League, and editor of Opportunity ; a Journal of
Negro Life.

Johnson, James Weldon: The Creation — a Negro Sermon, and Harlem, the
Culture Capital; bom Jacksonville, Fla., 1872; educated at public schools of
Jacksonville, at Atlanta University and at Columbia University, Hon.D.Litt.,
Atlanta University, Howard University, 1923; taught school in Jacksonville;
came to New York and was engaged with J. Rosamund Johnson and others
in libretto and song writing for the musical comedy stage; seven years
United States Consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua; journalist and publicist;
Executive Secretary, The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, New York City; Spingarn Medallist, 1925. Author: The
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912; The English Libretto of
Goyescas, 1915; Fifty Years and Other Poems, Cornhill Co., 1917. Editor,
The Book of American Negro Poetry, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922, and
The Book of American Negro Spirituals, Viking Press, 1925.

Miller, Kelly: Howard; the National Negro University; born Winnsboro,
S. C., 1863; educated at Howard University, A.B., 1886; post graduate
study Howard and Johns Hopkins University; since 1890 Professor of
Mathematics, and later Professor of Sociology, Howard University and Dean
of the College of Arts and Sciences, subsequently the Junior College;
author, sociologist, publicist. Author: Race Adjustment, 1909; The Appeal
to Conscience, 1918; The Everlasting Stain, 1924, and numerous monographs,
articles and pamphlets on education and race questions.

Moton, Robert Rtjssa: Hampton-Tuskegee — Missioners of the Masses; bom
Amelia County, Va., 1867; educated at Hampton Institute; graduated 1890;
officer and later Commandant Hampton, 1890-1915; since 1916 Principal of
Tuskegee Institute; President Negro Business League since 1919; educator
and publicist, member numerous inter- racial committees and foundations;
Hon. LL.D., Va. Union and Wilberforce, A.M., Williams, 1923. Author:
Racial Good Will, 1916; Finding a Way Out, an autobiography, 1920 and
numerous public addresses and publications.

Frazier, E. Franklin: Durham — Capital of the Black Middle Class; born Balti¬
more, September 24, 1894; educated at public schools, Baltimore, Howard
University, A.B., 1916; taught Tuskegee, Lawrenceville and Baltimore High
School, A.M., Clark University, 1920; Research Fellow, New York School
of Social Work, 1920-21; American Scandinavian Foundation Fellow, 1921-22;
studied the Co-operative Movement and People’s High Schools in Denmark,
Professor of Social Science, Morehouse College, 1922-24; since then Director
of the Atlanta School of Social Work. Contributor of articles on social
problems: The Crisis, Opportunity, Southern Workman, Howard Review,
and Journal of Social Forces.

Domingo, W. A.: The Gift of the Black Tropics; born Kingston, Jamaica, 1889;
educated at public schools and the Board School, Kingston ; came to the
United States in 1910, and has since been engaged in business and journalism.
Editor, The Emancipator (1920-21), contributor to The Messenger, The
Crusader, The Negro World, Survey Graphic, etc.

Herskovits, Melville J.: The Negro's Amencanism; bom Bellefontaine, Ohio;
educated at public schools; Ph.B., 1920, the University of Chicago; A.M.,
1921, and Ph.D., 1922, Columbia University; Fellow in Anthropology, Board
of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences, National Research Council, working
on the problem of variability under Racial Crossing with special reference
to Negro-White Crossing 1923 to date; Lecturer in Anthropology at Howard
University, 1925; and at Columbia University, 1925-26; scientific papers in
anthropological and sociological journals and contributor to the Nation ,
American Mercury, Survey, etc.

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

419

White, Walter F.: The Paradox of Color; bom Atlanta, Georgia; educated at
public schools and Atlanta University, A.B., 1916; has lived in New York
since 1918 as Assistant Executive Secretary of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People. Has travelled extensively as special
investigator for this Association, making reports on numerous lynchings,
race riots and other social studies. Contributor to the Nation, Century,
Forum, Freeman, Survey, Liberator, The Outlook, New Republic, The
Crisis, Bookman. Author: Fire in the Flint, a novel, Knopf, 1925, and
Flight, Knopf, 1926.

McDougald, Elsie J.: The Task of Negro Womanhood; bom and educated in
New York City, varied experience as teacher, social investigator and voca¬
tional guidance expert, the New York Urban League, the Manhattan Trade
School, the Henry Street Settlement, the New York branch United States
Department of Labor, the New York School system, and now vice-principal
of Public School 89. Supervisor of the Women’s Trade Union League and
Y. W. C. A. Survey, published 1919 as A New Day for the Colored Woman
Worker. Contributor of articles on welfare and social service work to edu¬
cational journals, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Survey Graphic.

Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt: Worlds of Color; born at Great Barrington, Mass.,
1868; educated at Fisk University, A.B., 1888, Harvard University, 1893,
A.B. University of Berlin, graduate study in History and Sociology, Ph.D.
(Harvard), 1895; professor of Economics and History at Atlanta University,
1896-1910. Editor, The Atlanta Studies, till 1911; since 1910 Director of
Publicity, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
and Editor of The Crisis; author and publicist; founder of the Pan-African
Congresses. Author: The Suppression of the Slave Trade (Harvard His¬
torical Studies, Vol. I), The Philadelphia Negro, The Souls of Black Folk,
John Brown, a Biography, The Q'uest of the Silver Fleece, Star of Ethiopia,
a Pageant, 1914; Darkwater, 1920; The Negro, 1915; The Gift of Black
Folk, 1924.

Johnson, Helene: The Road; bom and educated in Boston, English High School,
Boston Normal.

NOTES TO THE ILLUSTRATIONS

The art lay-out of The New Negro, including cover design, decorative features
and illustrations, represent the work of Winold Reiss, who has painstakingly
collaborated in the project to give a graphic interpretation of Negro life, freshly
conceived after its own patterns. Concretely in his portrait sketches, abstractly
in his symbolic designs, he has aimed to portray the soul and spirit of a people.
By the simple but rare process of not forcing an alien idiom upon nature, or a
foreign convention upon a racial tradition, he has succeeded in revealing some
of the rich and promising resources of Negro types, which await only upon
serious artistic recognition to become both for the Negro artist and American
art at large, one of the rich sources of novel material both for decorative and
representative art.

Winold Reiss, whose studio is now in New York, is son of Fritz Reiss, the
Bavarian landscape painter, pupil of Franz von Stuck, of Munich, and has
become a master delineator of folk types and folk character by wide experience
and definite specialization. With ever-ripening skill, he has studied and drawn
the folk types of Sweden, Holland, of the Black Forest, and his own native Tyrol,
and in America, the Black Foot Indians, the Pueblo people, the Mexicans, and
now, the American Negro. His art owes its peculiar success as much to the
philosophy of his approach as to his technical skill. He is a folk-lorist of the

! 'BIBLIOGRAPHY

420

brush and palette, seeking always the folk character back of the individual, the
psychology behind the physiognomy. In design also he looks not merely for
decorative elements, but for the pattern of the culture from which it sprang.
Without loss of naturalistic accuracy and individuality, he somehow subtly
expresses the type, and without being any the less human, captures the racial
and local. What Gauguin and his followers have done for the Far East, and
the work of Ufer and Blumenschein and the Taos school for the Pueblo and
Indian seems about to be done for the Negro and Africa.

Douglas, Aaron: Ten Decorative Designs; born 1898 in Topeka, Kan.; edu¬
cated at public schools, graduate of the School of Fine Arts, University of
Nebraska, 1923; for two years teacher of art in the colored High School
of Kansas City, Mo.; now engaged in art work in New York City; has
published drawings in Opportunity , Vanity Fair, and the Theatre Arts
Monthly.

NOTES TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliographical section of N egro- Americana has been compiled by Arthur A.
Schomburg; the section on Negro Folk Lore by Arthur H. Fauset, with acknowl¬
edgment for assistance to Professor Monroe Work of Tuskegee Institute; other
sections, The Negro in Literature, Negro Music, Negro Drama, African Culture,
and The Negro Question, have been compiled by the editor.

A. L.

A SELECT LIST OF NEGRO-AMERICANA AND

AFRICANA

NOTABLE EARLY BOOKS BY NEGROES

Compiled by Arthur A. Schomburg

A(bsolom) J(ones) and R(ichard) A(llen):

A narrative of the proceedings of the Black people during the late awful
calamity in Philadelphia and a Refutation of some censures. Philadel¬
phia, 1794.

Allen, Richard, First Bishop of the A. M. E. Church:

The life, experience and gospel labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen. Writ¬
ten by himself. Philadelphia, 1793.

Allen, Richard and Jacob Tapisco:

The Doctrine and Discipline of the A. M. E. Church. Philadelphia, 1819.
Allen, William G.:

Wheatley, Banneker and Horton. Essay, with poems of Horton. Boston, 1849.
The American Prejudice Against Color. London, 1853. 12mo., 107 pp.

Anglo- African Magazine:

William Hamilton, editor. New York, 1859-60.

Anonymous:

An Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens Threatened with Disfranchisement
to the People of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1838.

Slavery — By a Free Negro. 1789.

Banneker, Benjamin:

Almanacs — Goddard & Angell, Baltimore, 1792; Joseph Cruikshank, Phila¬
delphia, 1793, 1794, and 1795; James Angell, Baltimore, 1796; Samuel
Pleasants, Junr., Richmond, 1797.

Bell, J. Madison:

A Poem Entitled The Day and the War, delivered January 1st, 1864. San
Francisco, 1864.

An Anniversary Poem Entitled The Progress of Liberty, delivered January
1st, 1866. San Francisco, 1866.

A Poem Entitled The Triumph of Liberty. Detroit, 1870.

Poems. New York, 1864.

Bibb, Henry:

Narrative of the Life and Character of H. B., an American Slave, written
by himself. New York, 1849.

Blackson, Lorenzo D.:

The Rise and Progress of the Kingdom of Light and Darkness, etc. Phila¬
delphia, 1867.

Blyden, Edward Wilmot:

Vindication of the African Race. G. Killiam, Monrovia, 1857.

Liberia’s Offering. J. A. Gray, New York, 1862.

The Negro in Ancient History. New York, 1872.

Aims of a Liberal Education for Africa. Cambridge, 1882.

Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. London, 1887.

421

422

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, William Wells:

Narrative of W. W. B., a Fugitive Slave. Boston, 1847.
Three Years in Europe. London, 1852.

Clotel or the President’s Daughter. London, 1853.

The Black Man, His Antecedents, etc. New York, 1863.
The Negro in the American Rebellion. Boston, 1867.
The Rising Son. Boston, 1874.

Campbell, Robert:

A Pilgrimage to My Motherland. Philadelphia, 1861.

Cannon, Rev. N. C.:

The Rock of Wisdom, an Explanation of the Sacred Scriptures, to which are
added several interesting hymns. Portrait. 1833.

Capitein, Jacobus Elisa J.:

Dissertatio Politico-Theologica de Servitute, Libertati Christianae Contraria,
etc. Libertati Christianae non contraria. Leiden, 1742. Dutch Edition,
Amsterdam, 1742.

Catto, William T.:

A Semi-Centennial Discourse, . . . with a History of the Presbyterian Church
from its First Organization. Philadelphia, 1857.

Coker, Daniel:

A Dialogue Between a Virginian and an African Minister, by Rev. Daniel
Coker, Benj. Edes. Baltimore, 1810.

The Journal of Daniel Coker, etc. Baltimore, 1820.

Cooper, Rev. Thomas:

The African Pilgrim Hymns. London, 1820.

Cornish, Samuel E., and Wright, T. S.:

The Colonization Scheme Considered in its Rejection by the Colored Race.
Newark, N. J., 1840.

Crowther, Rev. Samuel:

Journal of the Expedition Up the Niger and Tshaddo Rivers. London, 1855.

Crummell, Rev. Alexander:

The Black Woman of the South, Her Neglects and Her Needs. Cincinnati,
no date.

The Future of Africa, being addresses, sermons delivered in the Republic of
Liberia. New York, 1862.

The Negro Race. 1863.

Africa and America. Springfield, 1891.

Cuffe, Paul:

Brief Account of Sierra Leone. New York, 1812.

Delaney, Martin R.:

Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the
United States. Philadelphia, 1852.

A Treatise on the Origin and Object of Ancient Freemasonry; Its Introduction
into the U. S. and Legitimacy Among Colored Men. Pittsburgh, 1853.
Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color. Philadelphia, 1879.
Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party. New York, 1861.
Douglass, Frederick:

The Heroic Slave. A thrilling narrative of the adventure of Madison Wash¬
ington in pursuit of liberty.

Narative, Frederick Douglass’s, 1845.

The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered. Rochester, 1854.

My Bondage and My Freedom. New York, 1855.

: BIBLIOGRAPHY

423

Douglass, William, the Rev.

Sermons. Philadelphia, 1852.

Annals of (St. Thomas’) First African Church in U. S. A. Philadelphia, 1862.
Du Chaillu, Paul B.:

Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. London, 1861.

A Journey to Ashango-Land. New York, 1867.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence:

Oak and Ivy. Dayton, 1893.

Majors and Minors. Toledo, 0., 1895.

Easton, Rev. H.:

A treatise on the intellectual character and civil and political condition of the
colored people of the United States. Boston, 1837.

Eliott, Robert Brown:

Oration Delivered in Faneuil Hall, April 14, 1874. Boston, 1874.

Flipper, Henry O.:

The Colored Cadet at West Point. New York, 1878.

Forten, James:

Letters from a Man of Color. (Published anonymously.) Philadelphia, 1813.
Proceedings of First Convention of Free Negroes at Philadelphia. 1817.

Garnett, Henry Highland:

An Address to the Slaves of the United States. Buffalo, 1843.

The Past and Present Condition and Destiny of the Colored Race. Troy,
1848.

A Memorial Discourse Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C., February 12, 1865. Philadelphia, 1865.

Glasgow, Jesse Ewing:

John Brown. Edinburgh, 1863.

The Harpers Ferry Insurrection. Edinburgh, 1860.

Greener, Richard T.:

Charles Sumner. Columbus, S. C., 1874.

Hall, Prince:

A Charge Delivered to the African Lodge, June 24, 1797, at Menotomy,
Mass., by the Rt. Worshipful Prince Hall, etc. Boston, 1797.
Hammon, Jupiter:

An Address to Miss Phyllis Wheatley. Hartford, Conn., 1778.

An Address to the Negroes in the State of New York. New York, 1787.
An Evening’s Improvement, Showing the Necessity of Beholding the Lamb of
God, etc., privately printed, circa 1790.

Harper, Frances Ellen W.:

Miscellaneous Poems. Boston, 1854.

Forest Leaves: Poems. Baltimore, 1855.

Haynes, Rev. Lemuel:

The Nature and Importance of True Republicanism, with a few suggestions
favorable to Independence ... it being the twenty-fifth anniversary
of American Independence, fourth of July, 1801. Rutland, Vt., c. 1801.

A Sermon Delivered at Rutland, West Parish, 1805. Boston, 1807.

Holly, James T.:

Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race. New Haven, 1857.

Hood, J. W. (Bishop):

The Negro in the Christian Pulpit. Raleigh, 1884.

424

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

Horton, George M.:

The Hope of Liberty. Raleigh, N. C., 1829.

Poems by a Slave. Philadelphia, 1837.

Horton, James Africanus, M.D.:

Physical and Medical Climate and Meteorology of the West Coast of Africa.
London, 1867.

Jones, Absolom:

A Thanksgiving Sermon on Account of the Abolition of the African Slave
Trade. Philadelphia, 1808.

Latino, Juan:

Austriados Libri II sive de victoria navali. Joannis Austriaci ad Echinadas
Insulas, etc. Granatae, 1576.

Lee, J aren a:

Religious Experience and Journal of. Philadelphia, 1849.

Lewis, R(obert) B(enjamin):

Light and Truth, Containing the Universal History of the Colored and Indian
Race. Boston, 1844.

Love, E. K.:

History of the First African Baptist Church. Savannah, 1888.

Manzano, Juan Francisco:

Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Emancipated, Translated
by R. R. Madden, M.B. London, 1840.

Marrant, Rev. Bro. (John):

A Sermon Preached on the 24 th June, 1789, African Lodge, etc. Boston, 1789.
Minutes of the First Convention of People of Color. Philadelphia, 1831.
Minutes of the Annual Convention of the Free People of Color at Phila¬
delphia. New York, 1833.

Nell, William Cooper:

The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution. Introduction by Harriet
B. Stowe, Boston, 1855.

Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812. Boston, 1852.

Othello {pseud.):

Negro Slavery, a pamphlet, 1788.

Parrott, Russell:

Address Delivered in St. Thomas P. E. Church. Philadelphia, 1814.

Paul, Nathaniel:

Abolition of Slavery. Albany, N. Y., 1827.

Payne, Rt. Rev. Daniel A.:

A Treatise on Domestic Education. Cincinnati, O., 1885.

Recollections of Seventy Years. 1888.

Pennington, J. W. C.:

A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People. Hartford, 1841.
The Fugitive Blacksmith. Gilpin. London, 1849.

Phillips, John Baptist:

Address to the Right Hon. Earl Bathurst, Relative to the Claims of the
Colored Population of Trinidad, etc. London, 1824.

Purvis, Robert:

Remarks on the Life and Character of James Forten. Philadelphia, n.d.

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

425

Raymond, M. (homme de couleur de Saint-Dominique) :

Observations sur Vorigine et le progres du prejuge des colons blajics contre
les kommes de couleur. Paris, 1791.

Rogers, Rev. G. C.:

The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise Considered. (An Argumentative
Poem.) Newark, N. J., 1856.

Roper, Moses:

The Escape of Moses Roper. 1837.

Ruggles, David:

The Extinguisher “Extinguished.” New York, 1834.

Rush, Christopher:

A Short Manual of the Rise and Progress of the African M. E. Church in
America. New York, 1843.

Sancho, Ignatius:

Letters of the Late I.S., an African to Which are Prefixed Memoirs of His
Life, by Joseph Jekyll. London, 1782. 2v.

The Theory of Music. 1789.

Saunders, Prince:

An Address Delivered at Bethel Church. Philadelphia, 1818.

A Memoir Presented to the American Convention for Promoting the Aboli¬
tion of Slavery and Improving the Condition of the African Race.
Philadelphia, 1818.

Sip kins, Henry:

Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Delivered in the African Church,
New York, 1809.

Smith, James McCune:

Lecture on the Haytien Revolutions, with a Sketch of the Character of
Toussaint UOuverture. New York, 1841.

Still, William:

The Underground Railway. Philadelphia, 1872.

Straker, D. Augustus:

The New South Investigated. Detroit, 1888.

Tanner, Bishop Benjamin T.:

An Apology for African Methodism. Baltimore, 1867.

The Color of Solomon — What? Philadelphia, 1895.

The Journal of Freedom:

First Negro Newspaper edited by John B. Russwurm and Rev. Samuel E.
Cornish. New York, 1827.

The Mirror of Freedom (Periodical). Edited by David Ruggles.

The North Star (Periodical):

Edited by Frederick Douglass. Subsequently changed to Frederick Douglass’
Own Paper. Rochester, 1847.

Thomas, J. J.:

Froudacity : West Indian Fables. London, 1889.

The Theory and Practice of Creole Grammar. Port of Spain, 1869.

Trotter, James M.:

Music and- Some Highly Musical People. Boston, 1878.

Vassa, Gustavus:

An Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olandah Equiano or G. V. the
African, written by himself. First American edition with portrait by
Tiebout, New York, 1791.

Ibid., to which are added poems on various subjects by Phyllis Wheatley.
J. Nicholson Co., Halifax, 1813.

! 'BIBLIOGRAPHY

42 6

Vastey, de Baron:

Reflexions Politiques sur quelques ouvrages et Joumaux Franqais concernant
Hayti. Imprimerie royale, Sans Souci, 1817.

Walker, David:

Appeal — in Four Articles, Together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens
of the World. Boston, 1829.

Wallace, John:

Carpet Bag Rule in Florida. Jacksonville, 1888.

Ward, Samuel Ringgold:

Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro. London, 18SS.

Webb, Frank J.:

The Garies and Their Friends, with introduction by Harriet B. Stowe.
London, 1857.

Whipper, William:

The National Reformer. Philadelphia, 1838.

Williams, George W.:

History of the Negro Race in America jrom 1619 to 1880. New York, 1883.
Williams, Rev. Peter, Jr.:

Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. New York, 1808.

A Discourse Delivered on the Death of Captain Paul Cuffee. New York, 1817.
Willson, Joseph T.:

Sketches of the Higher Classes of Colored Society in Philadelphia. Phila¬
delphia, 1841.

Wheatley, Phyllis:

An Elegiac Poem on the Death of the Reverend and Learned George White-
field. Boston, 1770.

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Port., London, 1773.
Whitfield, James M.:

Poems: America and Other Poems. Buffalo, 1853.

Emancipation Oration. San Francisco, 1867.

Whitman, Albery A.:

Not a Man and Yet a Man. Springfield, O., 1877.

Wright, Theodore S.:

Race Prejudice Against the Colored Man. New York, 1837.

THE NEGRO IN LITERATURE

AMERICAN FICTION BEFORE 1910

Anonymous: The Prince of Kashna, by the author of In the Tropics, Carleton,
1866.

Bacon, Eugene J.: Lyddy, a Tale of the Old South, New York, 1898.

Braddon, Mary E.: The Octoroon, New York, no date.

Brown, Katharine H.: Diane, New York, 1905.

Brown, William Wells: Clotelle, a Tale of the Southern States, London, 1853,
American edition, Boston, 1867. Miralda, or the Beautiful Quadroon, n.d.

Cable, George W.: Old Creole Days, Scribner, 1879. Madame Delphine, Scrib¬
ner, 1881. Grandissimes, 1884. Gideon’s Band, 1914.

Carruthers, William A.: The Cavalier of Virginia, London, 1837.

Chestnutt, Charles W.: The Conjure Woman, Houghton, Mifflin, 1899. The
Wife of His Youth and Other Stories, 1899. The House Behind the Cedars,
1900. The Marrow of Tradition, 1901. The Colonel’s Dream, Doubleday,
Page, 1905.

Corrothers, James D.: The Black Cat. Funk & Wagnalls, 1902.

Crane, Stephen: The Monster and Other Stories, Harper, 1899.

Dixon, Thomas: Leopard Spots, New York, 1902.

Donnelly, Ignatius: Doctor Huguet, Chicago, 1891.

Dunbar, Alice: The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories, Dodd, Mead,
1899.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence: Folks From Dixie, Dodd Mead, 1898. The Uncalled ,
Dodd, Mead, 1898. The Love of Landry, Dodd, Mead, 1900. The Sport
of the Gods, Dodd, Mead, 1901. The Fanatics, Dodd, Mead, 1901. The
Strength of Gideon and Other Stories, Dodd, Mead, 1900. Heart of Happy
Hollow, Dodd, Mead, 1904.

Durham, John S.: Diane, Priestess of Hayti, Lippincott, 1902.

Earle, Victorl^: Aunt Lindy: a Story Founded on Real Life, J. J. Little, 1893.

Gilmore, James R. (pseud. Edmund Kirk): Among the Pines, Carleton, N. Y.,
1862. My Southern Friends, Carleton, N. Y., 1863.

Griggs, Sutton E.; Imperium in imperio, Cincinnati, 1899. The Unfettered,
Nashville, 1902. The Hindered Hand, 1905.

Hall, A. Z.: Stanton White, Cleveland, 1905.

Harben, W. N.: North Georgia Sketches, Chicago, 1900. Mam’ Linda, Harper,
1907.

Harper, Frances E.: Iota Leroy, Boston, 1892.

Harris, Joel Chandler: Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings, 1881. Nights With
Uncle Remus, 1883. Plantation Pageants, 1898. Mingo and Other Sketches,
1898. Minervy Ann, Scribner, 1899. Uncle Remus and His Friends, Hough¬
ton, Mifflin, 1892.

Howells, William Dean: The Imperative Duty, Harper, 1892.

Ingraham, J. H.: The Quadroon, New York, 1839.

Kennedy, John Pendleton: Swallow Bam, or a Sojourn in the Old Dominion,
Phila., 1832.

James, G. P. R.: The Old Dominion, Harper, 1856.

427

428

I BIBLIOGRAPHY

McCants, E. C.: In the Red Hills, Doubleday, Page, 1904.

Page, Thos. Nelson: In Ole Virginia, Scribner, 1887. Red Rock, Scribner, 1898.

An Old Gentleman of the Black South, Scribner, 1901.

Pratt, Lucy; Ezekiel, New York, 1909.

Rayner, Emma: Handicapped Among the Free, New York, 1903.

Sargeant, Epes: Peculiar: a Hero of the Southern Rebellion, Boston, 1862.
Spears, John Randolph, The Fugitive, Scribner, 1899.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Samson, Boston, 1852. Dred;
a Tale of the Dismal Swamp, Samson, Boston, 1857. Nina Gordon (sequel
to Dred), Samson, Boston, 1866.

Stowers, William H.: (pseud.: “Sanda”) Appointed, Detroit, 1894.

Stuart, Ruth McEnery: Napoleon Jackson, New York, 1902; The Second Wooing
of Salina Sue, New York, 1905. The River’s Children, New York, 1904.
Tourgee, Albion, A Fool’s Errand, New York, 1879. Bricks Without Straw,
New York, 1880. Black Ice, New York, 1888.

Webb, Frank, J.: The Garies and Their Friends, Routledge & Co., London, 1857.
Wilson, Beckless: Harold; An Experiment, Globe Publishers, New York, 1891.

AMERICAN FICTION SINCE 1910

Ashby, William M.: Redder Blood, Neale, 1916.

Anderson, Sherwood: Black Laughter, Boni & Liveright, 1925.

Bennett, John: Madame Margot, Century, 1921.

Cotter, Joseph S.: Negro Tales, Cosmopolitan Press, N. Y., 1912.

Cotton, Jane B.: Wall-Eyed Caesar’s Ghost and Other Sketches, Marshall Jones,
1925.

Cozart, W. F.: The Chosen People, Christopher Press, 1924.

Davis, James F.: Almanzar, Holt, 1918.

Dubois, W. E. B.: The Quest of the Silver Fleece, McClurg, 1911.

Fauset, Jessie R.: There Is Confusion, Boni & Liveright, 1924.

Frank, Dr. (pseud.) : Negrolana, Christopher Publishers, Boston, 1924.

Frank, Waldo: Holiday, Boni & Liveright, 1923.

French, Alice: By Inheritance, Bobbs-Merrill, 1910.

Glasgow, Ellen: Barren Ground, Doubleday, Page, 1924.

Heywood, Du Bose: Porgy, Doran, 1925.

Hough, Emerson: The Purchase Price, New York, 1910.

Johnson, James Weldon: Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Sherman,
French, 1912.

Johnston, Mary: The Slave Ship, Little, Brown, 1925.

Jones, Joshua H.: By Sanction of Law, Brimmer, 1924.

Kennedy, R. Emmett: Black Cameos, A. and C. Boni, 1924.

Kester, Paul: His Own Country, Bobbs-Merrill, 1917.

Lipscomb, Harry F.: The Prince of Washington Square, New York, 1925.
Majette, V. S., White Blood, Stratford Co., 1924.

Martin, Mrs. George Madden: The Children in the Mist, Appleton, 1920.
Mischeaux, Oscar: The Conquest, Woodruff Press, Nebraska, 1913.

Ovington, Mary White: Hazel, Crisis Pub., 1913. The Shadow, Harcourt, Brace,
1920.

Peterkin, Julia: Green Thursday, Knopf, 1924.

Pickens, William: The Vengeance of the Gods, Phila., 1922.

Pratt, Lucy: Ezekiel Expands, Houghton, Mifflin, 1914.

Scarborough, Dorothy: The Land of Cotton, Macmillan, 1923.

Shands, Hubert, A.: White and Black, Harcourt, Brace, 1922.

Stribling, T. S.: Birthright, Century, 1922.

Toomer, Jean: Cane, Boni & Liveright, 1923,

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

429

Van Vechten, Carl: Nigger Heaven, Knopf, 1926.

Walrond, Eric: Tropic Death, Boni, Liveright, 1926.

White, Walter F.: The Fire in the Flint, Knopf, 1924. Flight, Knopf, 1926.
Wood, Clement: Nigger, 1926, Dutton, 1922.

ENGLISH FICTION

Allen, Grant: The Great Taboo, London, 1890.

Anonymous: Bayette — a South African Novel, Cape Town, 192S.

Banks, G. L.: God’s Providence House, London, 1865.

Behn, Mrs. Aphra: Oronooko, London, 1688.

Button, Rev. Weeden: Zimao; the African, London, 1800.

Conrad, Joseph: The Nigger of the Narcissus, London, 1897.

Firbank, Ronald: Prancing Nigger, Brentano, 1924.

Garnett, David: The Sailor’s Return, Knopf, 1925.

Haigh, Richmond: An Ethiopian Saga, Holt, 1919.

Hough, Charles B.: Witch Doctor, London, 1924.

Kingston, William H. G.: John Deane, London, 1883.

McFall, Haldine: The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer, London, 1897.

Mackenzie, Jean: African Clearings, Houghton, Mifflin, 1924.

Merrick, Leonard: Quaint Companions, E. P. Dutton, 1924.

Millln, Sarah G.: God’s Step-Children, Boni & Liveright, 1924.

Phllpotts, Eden: Black, White and Brindled, Macmillan, 1923.

Plomer, Wm.: Tarbott Wolfe, Harcourt, Brace, 1926.

Powys, Llewellyn: Ebony and Ivory, American Library Service, 1923. Black
Laughter, Harcourt, Brace, 1924.

Schreiner, Olive: Trooper Peter Halkut of Mashonaland, London, 1897.
Simonton, Ida Vera: Hell’s Playground, Brentano, 1925.

Wylie, 1. A. R.: The Black Harvest, Doran, 1926.

Young, Francis Brett: Woodsmoke, E. P. Dutton. Sea Horses, Knopf, 1925.

CONTINENTAL FICTION

Charbonneau, Louis: Mamba et son Amour, Ferenczi, Paris, 1924.

Chaumel, Alfred: Aminata, Paris, 1923.

Cousturier, Lucie: Des Inccmnus chez moi, Sirene, Paris, 1920. La Foret du
H aut -Niger— Cahiers D’aujourd’hui No. 12, 1923. Mon ami Fatou, Citadine,
Paris, 1925. Mon Ami Soumare, Paris, 1925.

Demaison, Andre: Diato, Michel, 1923. Les Oiseaux d’ebene , Paris, 192^

Goll, Claire: Neger Jupiter raubt Europa, Basel, 1925.

Guary-Cesar-Lalne, G.: Les Batards du Soleil, Paris, 1922.

Hugo, Victor: Bug-Jargal, Paris, 1816.

Joseph, Gaston: Koffi, Paris, 1922. Trans. Elaine Wood, Danielson, London,
1923.

Leblond, Marius et Ary, Ulysses Cafre, Paris, 1924.

Maran, Rene : Batouala, Michel, 1921. Trans. A. S. Seltzer, New York, 1922.
Salmon, Andre: La Negresse du Sacre-Coeur, Paris, 1920.

Tharaud, Jerome et Jean: La Randonee de Samba Diouf, Paris, 1922. Trans.
The Long Walk of Samba Diouf, Duffield, N. Y., 1924.

NEGRO POETRY

The Book of American Negro Verse, compiled by James Weldon Johnson, Har¬
court, Brace & Co., 1922.

Negro Poets and their Poems, R. T. Kerlin, Associated Publishers, Washington,
1923.

430 'BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry, Arthur A. Schomburg,
New York, 1916.

An Anthology of American Negro Verse, compiled by N. I. White and C. A.
Jackson, Trinity College Press, Durham, 1924.

Poetas de Color, por Francisco Calcaquo, Havana, 1878.

Bell, J. Madison: The Poetical Works of M. B., Lansing, Michigan, 1901.

Braithwaite, Wm. Stanley: Lyrics of Life and Love, Turner & Co.,. Boston,
1904. The House of Falling Leaves, Luce, Boston, 1908.

Campbell, James E.: Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere, Chicago, 1905.

Carmichael, Wm. T.: In the Heart of a Folk, Comhill Co., Boston, 1918.

Corrothers, J. D.: Selected Poems, 1907; The Dream and the Song, 1914.

Cotter, J. S., Jr.: The Band of Gideon and Other Poems, Boston, 1918.

Cotter, J. S., Sr.: A White Song and a Black One, Louisville, 1909.

Cullen, Countee P.: Color, Harper & Brothers, 1925.

Davis, Daniel W.: Weh Down South, Cleveland, 1897.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence: Lyrics of Lowly Life, New York, 1896. Lyrics of
the Hearth, New York, 1901. Collected Poems, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920.

Fortune, T. Thomas: Dreams of Life, New York, 1905.

Hammon, Jupiter: Poems, reprinted, Heartmann, New York, 1916.

Harper, F. E. W.: Miscellaneous Poems, Boston, 1854. Collected Poems, Phila¬
delphia, 1900.

Hawkins, Walter E.: Chords and Discords, The Gorham Press, Boston, 1920.

Hill, Leslie P.: The Wings of Oppression, Boston, 1921.

Holloway, J. W.: From the Desert, New York, 1919.

Hughes, Langston: The Weary Blues, Knopf, 1925 — Fine Clothes to the Jew,
1927.

Johnson, Charles Bertram: Songs of My People, Boston, 1918.

Johnson, Fenton: A Little Dreaming, Chicago, 1913. Visions of the Dusk,
New York, 1915. Songs of the Soil, New York, 1916.

Johnson, Georgia Douglas: The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems, Com¬
hill Co., 1918. Bronze, Brimmer Co., 1922.

Johnson, James Weldon: Fifty Years and Other Poems, Comhill Co., Boston,
1917. '

Jones, Edward Smythe: The Sylvan Cabin, Boston, 1911.

McKay, Claude: Songs of Jamaica, Kingston, 1912. Constab Ballads, London,
1912. Spring in New Hampshire, London, 1921. Harlem Shadows, Harcourt,
Brace & Co., New York, 1922.

McClellan, G. M.: The Path of Dreams, Louisville, 1916.

Ray, Cordelia: Poems, New York, 1910.

Shackleford, Wm. H.: Poems, Nashville, 1907.

Wheatley, Phyllis: Collected Poems, reprinted, Heartmann, New York, 1916.

Whitman, A. A.: The Rape of Florida, St. Louis, 1884. Twasinta’s Seminoles,
St. Louis, 1890. An Idyll of the South, New York, 1901.

SLAVE NARRATIVES

The Missionary Pioneer, a Brief Memoir of John Stewart, New York, 1827.

Ball, Charles: Slavery in the United States; a Narrative of the Life and Adven¬
tures of C. B., Lewiston, Pa., 1836.

Hildreth, R.: The Slave or Memoirs of Archy Moors, 1836.

Narratives of the Adventures and Escapes of Moses Roper, 1837.

Narrative of Henry Watson, a Fugitive Slave, 1845.

Pickard, Kate E.: The Kidnapped and the Ransomed (Peter Still), 1846.

Brown, William Wells: Narrative of W. W. B., Boston, 1847.

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

43i

Stearns, C.: Narrative of Henry Box Brown, 1849. Life of J. Henson Formerly
a Slave, 1849.

Experience of Thomas Jones, Who Was a Slave for Forty-three Years, 1850.
Truth, Sojourner, Narrative of, 1850.

Paine, L. W.: Six Years in a Georgia Prison, 1852.

Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green, 1853.

Northup, Solomon: Twelve Years a Slave, Narative of Solomon Northup, 1853.
Douglass, Frederick: My Bondage and Freedom, 1855.

Truth Stranger Than Fiction (Josiah Henson). Cleveland, 1858.

Ward, Samuel Ringgold: Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, 1855.

Stewart, Austin: Twenty -One Years a Slave and Forty Years a Free Man
Rochester, 1857.

Davis, Rev. Noah: Narrative of Noah Davis, 1859.

Loguen, Bishop: As a Slave and as a Free Man, 1859.

Craft, William and Ellen: Running a 1,000 Miles for Freedom, or the Escape
from Slavery, London, 1860.

Brent, Linda: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Boston, 1861.

Still, William: The Underground Railroad, Philadelphia, 1872.

Eliot, W. G.: The Story of Archer Alexander, 1885.

Bradford, Sarah H.: Harriet (Tubman), The Moses of Her People , New York
1897.

Smith, Amanda: An Autobiography, Chicago, 1893.

BIOGRAPHIES

Allen, Richard: Life and Times, Philadelphia, 1833.

Andrews, R. McCants: John Merrick, Durham, 1920.

Alexander, Chari.es: Life and Adventures of Allen Allensworth New York
1914. ’

Baker, Henry E.: Benjamin Banneker, Washington, 1924.

Brawley, B. G.: Women of Achievement, Chicago, 1919.

Brown, William Wells: The Black Man, New York, 1863.

Cuffe, Paul: A Memoir of Captain Paid Cuffe, York, 1812.

Douglass, Frederick: Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Hartford, 1882.
Gibbs, Mifflin W.: Shadow and Light, an Autobiography, Washington, 1902."
Green, John P.: Truth Stranger Than Fiction, Cleveland, 1887.

Hare, Maud Cuney: A Life of Norris Wright Cuney, New York, 1913.
Holtzclaw, W. H.: The Black Man’s Burden, New York, 1915.

Jones, L. C.: Piney Woods and Its Story, New York, 1922.

Lane, Lunsford: Autobiography, Boston, 1845.

Langston, John M.: From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol Hart¬
ford, 1894.

Moton, R. R.: Finding a Way Out, an Autobiography, New York, 1920.

Page, J.: The Black Bishop, J. S. H. Crowther, London, 1908.

Pickens, William: The Heir of Slaves, New York, 1911. Bursting Bonds
Boston, 1923. '

Rollin, Frank A.: Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delaney, Boston, 1868.
Rowland, Mabel: Bert Williams, Son of Laughter, English Crafters, N. Y , 1923
Sayers, W. C. Berwick: Samuel Coleridge -Taylor, London, 1915.

Sherwood, H. N.: Paul Cuffe, Washington, 1924.

Simmons, Wm. J.: Men of Mark, Cleveland, O., 1887.

Sprague, Wm. B.: Sketches of the Life and Character of Lemuel Haynes New
York, 1839. *

Walters, Alexander: My Life and Work, Chicago, 1917.

Washington, Booker T. : Up from Slavery, New York, 1901.

NEGRO DRAMA

A SELECT LIST OF PLAYS OF NEGRO LIFE

Anderson, Garland, “Appearances,” First performance, New York, 1925.
Bishop, Nan Bagley, “Roseanne,” Greenwich Village Theatre, New York, 1923.
Bolton, Guy (and Tom Carlton), “Children,” Washington Square Players, 1916.
Burrill, Mamie P., “Aftermath,” “They That Sit in Darkness,” New York, 1919.
Busey, DeReath Byrd, “The Yellow Tree,” Howard Players, 1922.

Cotter, Joseph S. Jr., “Caleb, the Degenerate,” Louisville, Ky., 1903.
Culbertson, Ernest H., “Goat Alley,” “Jackey,” 1922.

Davenport, Butler, “Justice,” Bramhall Players,” 1920.

Downing, Henry F., “The Racial Tangle,” 1920.

DuBois, W. E. Burghardt, “The Star of Ethiopia,” The Horizon Guild, 1913.
Duncan, Thelma: “The Death Dance,” Howard Players, 1923.

Galsworthy, John, “The Forest,” Chicago Little Theatre, 1925. Scribner, 1924.
Green, Paul, “White Dresses,” “Granny Bolling ,” The Carolina Folk Players,
Henry Holt, 1923; “Two Carolina Folks Plays,” Poet Lore, Vol. 35, 1924;
“The Hot Iron,” “The End of the Road,” “Prayer Meetin’ ” and “Ole Wash
Lucas.” Poet Lore, 1924 ; “Sam Tucker,” Poet Lore, 1925 ; “The No ’Count
Boy,” The Dallas Little Theatre, 1925; Theatre Arts Magazine, November,
1924. Collected Plays: “The Lonesome Road,” McBride, N. Y., 1926.
Grimke, Angelina, “Rachel,” Nathaniel Guy Players, 1916; Comhill Co., Boston,
1920.

Johnson, Fenton, “The Cabaret Girl,” The “Shadows” Theatre, Chicago, 1925.
Middleton, George, “The Black Tie,” New York, 1922.

Mygatt, Tracy, “The Noose,” Neighborhood Players. New York, 1922.
Nelson, Alice M. Dunbar, “Mine Eyes Have Seen,” Crisis, 1918.

O’Neill, Eugene, “The Dreamy Kid,” “The Emperor Jones,” Provincetown
Players, 1920; “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” Boni & Liveright, 1924.
Ovington, Mary White. “Hazel,” Crisis, 1913.

Pratt, Rachel Brock, “The Way of the World,” New York, 1921.

Richardson, Willie, “The Deacon’s Awakening,” St. Paul, 1921; “The Chip
Woman’s Fortune,” Chicago Art Players, 1923; “Mortgaged,” The Howard
Players, 1924; “The Broken Banjo,” The Krigwa Guild, 1925; MSS. “The
Idle Head,” “The Shell-Road Witch,” “The Victims,” “Compromise.”

Rogers, Wm. R., Jr., “Judge Lynch,” The Dallas Little Theatre, 1924.
Sheldon, Edward, “The Nigger” (The Governor), The New Theatre, New York,
1909; Macmillan Co., 1910.

Sheldon, Edward and Charles MacArthur, “Lulu Belle,” New York, 1926.
1926.

Thompson, Eloise Bibb, “Cooped Up,” Lafayette Players, New York, 1924;

“Caught,” Ethiopian Folk Players, 1925.

Torrence, Ridgeley, “Granny Maumee,” The New York Stage Society, 1914;
“Simon the Cyrenian,” “The Rider of Dreams,” published as “Three Plays
for the Negro Theatre,” Macmillan Co., 1917; The Hapgood Players, 1916;
“The Danse Calinda,” Theatre Arts, 1921; The Howard Players, 1923.
Toomer, Jean, “Kabnis,” published in “Cane,” Boni & Liveright, 1923.

Tully, Jim, and Frank Dazey, “Black Boy,” New York, 1926.

432

: 'BIBLIOGRAPHY

433

Ware, Alice, “The Open Door, a Pageant,” The Atlanta Players, 1923.

Webb, Helen, “Genefrede,” The Howard Players, 1923.

White, Lucy, “The Bird Child,” 1922.

Wyborg, Mary H., “Taboo,” Margaret Wycherley Players, New York, 1922;
London, 1923.

OLDER PLAYS

Archer, Thos., “The Black Doctor,” London, 1847.

Bickerstaffe, Isaac, “The Padlock,” London, 1768.

Brown, William Wells, “Miralda,” Boston, 1855.

Cumberland, R., “The West Indian, a Comedy,” New York, 1818.

Easton, Wm. Edgar, “Dessalines,” Galveston, 1895.

Grovenvelt, Sara B., “Octile, the Octoroon.”

Lamartine, “Toussant L’Ouverture,” Paris, 1833.

Aldridge, Ira, Repertory, 1860-66, “Karfa, the Slave,” “Obi,” “Opposum Up a
Gum Tree,” “Virginian Mummy,” “Zanga, the Slave.”

Southerne, Thomas, “Oroonoko” London, 1696.

Stowe, Harriet B., “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Dramatized by J. Lacy, 1853. “Dred,”
dramatized by H. J. Conway, New York, 1856.

NEGRO MUSIC: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

NEGRO SPIRITUALS AND FOLK SONGS— COLLECTIONS

The Negro Singer’s Own Book, Turner & Fisher, Philadelphia, 1846.

Christy’s Plantation Melodies, Fisher & Bro., 1851.

The Songs of the Contrabands, L. C. Lockwood, New York, 1861.

Slave Songs of the United States, Wm. F. Allen, A Simpson & Co., 1867.

The Story of the Jubilee Singers and their Songs, T. F. Seward & Geo. L. White,
Bigelow & Maine, 1872. Ibid., 2nd Edition, edited by J. B. T. Marsh,
Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1880.

The Jubilee Singers, G. D. Pike, 1873.

Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students, edited by T. P.
Fenner & F. G. Rathbon, G. P. Putnam, 1874. 2nd Edition, G. P. Putnam,
1897.

Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute; its Story and its Songs, H. W. Ludlow,
Hampton Press, 1884.

Bahama Songs and Stories, Chas. L. Edwards, Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1895.

Old Plantation Hymns, Wm. E. Barton, Lamson, Wolffe & Co., 1899.

Songs of the Old South, Miss Howard Weedon, Doubleday Page, 1900.

Creole Songs from New Orleans, Clara G. Peterson, New Orleans, 1902.

Twenty-three Ragtime Hits, Vocal Folio No. 3, Stern & Co., New York, 1903.

Calhoun Plantation Songs, collected by Emily Hallowell, C. W. Thompson, Boston,
1901. Second Series, collected by Emily Hallowed, C. W. Thompson, Boston,
1905. Third Series, collected by Emily Hallowed, C. W. Thompson, Boston,
1907.

Some American Negro Folk Songs, F. J. Work, Boston, 1909.

Religious Folk Songs of the Negro, as Sung on the Plantations, Institute Press,
Hampton, 1909.

New Plantation Melodies as Sung by the Tuskegee Students, N. Clark Smith,
Tuskegee, 1909.

Negro Folk Songs, H. Barrett, Hampton Press, 1912.

Plantation Songs, Ruth McHenry Stewart, Appleton Co., 1916.

The Hampton Series — Negro Folk Songs, recorded by Natade Curtis Burdn, G.
Schirmer Co., 1918-19, 4 vols.

Songs and Sayings from the Dark Continent, by Natalie Curtis Burlin, G. Schirmer
Co., 1920.

Bayou Ballads, Twelve Folk Songs from Louisiana, Mina Monroe, Schirmer, 1921.

Six Creole Folk Songs with Text, Maud Cuney Hare, New York, 1921.

Ten Negro Spirituals, by W. A. Fisher, H. B. Gaul, Rosamund Johnson and C. F.
Manney, Oliver Ditson Co., 1924.

Eight Negro Songs from Bedford County, F. H. Abbott, Enoch and Sons, 1924.

Bellair Plantation Melodies, Helen D. Benedict, New Orleans, 1924.

Fifty-eight Spirituals for Choral Use, by Hollis Dann and H. W. Loomis, C. Bir¬
chard Co., Boston, 1924.

Twenty-five Negro Spirituals, edited by Hugo Frey, Robbins, Engel, Inc., New
York, 1924.

Folk Songs of the American Negro, collected and edited by Harriet Turner, Boston
Music Co., 1925.

434

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

43 5

Seventy Negro Spirituals, Ed. William Arms Fisher, Musicians Library, 1926.
Mellows; Negtp Work Songs, Street Cries and Spirituals, R. Emmet Kennedy,
A. & C. Boni, 1925.

St. Helena Spirituals, C. J. S. Ballanta, Schirmer, 1925.

The Book of American Negro Spirituals, edited by J. Weldon and Rosamund
Johnson, the Viking Press, New York, 1925.

Religious Folk Songs of the Negro, revised and enlarged edition by R. Nathaniel
Dett, G. Schirmer, 1926.

The Second Book of Negro Spirituals, edited by J. Weldon and Rosamund John¬
son, The Viking Press, New York, 1926.

Blues: An Anthology of Jazz Music from the Early Negro Folk Blues to Modem
Music, W. C. Handy and E. A. Niles, A. & C. Boni, 1926.

NEGRO FOLK MUSIC: COMMENTARIES

The African Pilgrim Hymns, Rev. Thomas Cooper, Bertrand, London, 1820.
African Melodies, John C. Scherff, New York, 1844.

Ethiopian Songster, E. B. Christy, compiler, New York, 1858.

Negro Spirituals, Miss McKim, Dwight’s Journal of Music, November 8, 1862.
Negro Spirituals, H. G. Spaulding, The Continental Monthly, 1863.

Negro Spirituals, Thos. W. Higginson, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1867; also Chapter
IX of Army Life in a Black Regiment, Boston, 1870.

The Jubilee Singers and their Campaign, G. D. Pike, Lee & Shippen, Boston, 1873.
Music and Some Musical People, James M. Trotter, Lee & Shepard, New York,
1878.

A Collection of Revival Hymns, Marshall W. Taylor, Cincinnati, 1882.

Plantation Melodies, Marshall W. Taylor, Cincinnati, 1883.

Creole Songs and Dances, Geo. W. Cable, Century Magazine, February, 1886.
Notes on Negro Music, Chas. Peabody, Journal of American Folk Lore, Vol. XVI,
1903.

Negro Music, Chas. Peabody, Southern Workman, May, 1904.

The Sorrow Songs , Chapter IV of Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois,
Chicago, 1903.

Afro-American Folk Songs — A Study in Racial and National Music, H. E.

Krehbiel, G. Schirmer, New York, 1914.

Folk Song of the American Negro, J. W. Work, Fisk University Press, 1915.
American Folk Music in “Music in America,” Vol. 4, pp. 281-321, C. Sonneck, 1918.
The Natural Harmonic and Rhythmic Sense of the Negro, Walter Goldstein,
Proceedings National Association of Music Teachers, pp. 29-39, 1917.
Foundation for Negro Music of Future, May Stanley, Musical America, July 6,

1918.

Negro Music at Birth, Nathalie Curtis, Musical Quarterly, January and October,

1919.

American Negro Music, R. Nathaniel Dett, Musical America, August, 1918, and
May 31, 1919.

An American School of Music, Philip Hale, Musical Review, August, 1908.

Two Views of Ragtime, Hiram K. Moderwell, Seven Arts, Vol. 2, 1917.

The Negro Spiritual, Oscar Seagle, Musical Courier, Vol. 74, No. 21, 1917.
Stephen Foster Collins, H. V. Milligan, New York, 1920.

Negro Spirituals, Harvey Gaul, New Music Review, Vol. 17, p. 147.

Famous Negro Musicians, P. Lovinggood, Brooklyn Forum Press, New York,
1921.

Negro Folk Song, R. E. Kennedy, Musical America, Vol. 28, August, 1918;
The Music Student, September, 1919; Musical Courier, Vol. 87, 1923, and
Poetic and Melodic Gifts of the Negro, Etude 41-159, March 23, 1925.

'BIBLIOGRAPHY

436

Negro Spirituals, David Guion, Musical Courier, Vol. 87, November 29, 1923.
Musical Genius of the American Negro, C. C. White, Etude 42, 305, May, 1924.
Jazz Band and Negro Music, Darius Milhaud, Living Age, 323, p. 169, 1924.
Spirituals in the Making, C. L. Adams, Charleston Museum Quarterly, Vol. 1, No.
2, 1925.

On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, Dorothy Scarborough, Harvard University
Press, 1925.

The Negro and His Songs, Howard W. Odum and G. B. Johnson, Trinity College
Press, 1925.

NEGRO SPIRITUALS: ARRANGEMENTS

Boatner, E. H. S.

Three Spirituals, O. Ditson Co., 1924; Wade in de Water, On ma Journey,
I Done Done. Five Negro Songs, Ditson, 1926: You Better Mind— 0 Gimme
Your Hand, Sid Down, Servant, Mount Zion, Dis Ole Hammer.

Brown, Lawrence

Steal Away, Winthrop Rogers, London, 1922. Five Negro Melodies for Cello,
Schott, London, 1923. Five Spirituals for Voice and Piano, Schott, 1924.
Two Songs for Male Quartet, Boosey, 1924. Five Spirituals for Solo Voice
in The Book of American Negro Spirituals, Viking Press, New York, 1925.

Burleigh, Henry Thacker

Plantation Melodies, Old and New, 1901. Two Plantation Songs, Wm. Max¬
well, New York, 1905. Ethiopias Paean of Exaltation, Ricordi. From the
Southland, Wm. Maxwell Co., 1910. O Southland, 1919. Edited: Negro
Minstrel Melodies — a Collection of 25 Songs by Stephen C. Foster, Schirmer,
New York, 1910. Negro Folk Songs, four volumes, Ricordi, New York, 1921.

Spirituals arranged for solo voice and piano, Ricordi, 1917-1925: Please Don’t
Let This Harvest Pass, Weepin’ Mary, I Want to Be Ready, Walk in Jeru¬
salem, I Don’t Feel Noways Tired, Go Down, Moses, Deep River, Balm in
Gilead, Let Us Cheer the Weary Traveller, My Lord, What a Momin’, I Stood
on de Ribber of Jordan, ’Tis Me, O Lord, Were You There?, Every Time I
Feel the Spirit, Steal Away, Nobody Knows, John’s Gone Down on de Is¬
land, O Rocks, Don’t Fall on Me, Ma Way’s Cloudy, You May Bury Me in de
East, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, O Peter, Go Ring-a-Dem Bells, Sometimes
I Feel Like a Motherless Child, Don’t Weep When I’m Gone, He’s Jes
de Same To-day, De Gospel Train, Heav’n, Heav’n, Didn’t My Lord De¬
liver Daniel, Little David, Play on Your Harp, I’m a-Rollin’.

Three Negro Spirituals, arranged for four-part Chorus, Schirmer, 1916:— Father
Abraham, So Sad, Didn’t My Lord.

Two Spirituals, arranged for four-part Chorus, Schirmer, 1921:— Dig My
Grave, Deep River.

Were You There, mixed voices, Ricordi, 1924.

Burlin, Nathalie Curtis

Hymn of Freedom (from O Ride on, Jesus), Schirmer, 1923.

Cook, Will Marion

Mandy Lou, Schirmer, 1904. An Exhortation, Rain Song, 1914. Swing Along,
1912. In Dahomey, A musical Comedy, Keith Prowse, London, 1902.

Dett, R. Nathaniel

Negro Spirituals for Solo Voice, three volumes, John Church Co., 1919: Follow
Me, Somebody’s Knocking, I’m So Glad, Oh, the Land I’m Bound For, Poor
Me, Zion Hallelujah.

Oh, Mary, Don’t You Weep, Chorus, mixed voices, C. C. Birchardt Co., 1919.
The Chariot Jubilee, Tenor Solo and mixed voices, John Church, 1919. Listen
to the Lambs, Anthem, Schirmer, New York, 1923. Gently, Lord, O Gently,

•BIBLIOGRAPHY

437

Lord, John Church, 1924. I’m a-Goin’ to See My Friends Ag’in, John Church,
1924. There’s a Man Goin’ ’round’ Takin’ Names, John Church. 1924. I’m
Troubled in Mind.

Diton, Carl R.

Four Spirituals, arranged for four-part Chorus, G. Schirmer, 1912: Little David,
Play on Your Harp, Deep River, Every Time I Feel the Spirit, Pilgrim Song.

Four Negro Spirituals, Schirmer, 1914: Poor Mourner’s Got a Home at Last,
An’ He Never Spoke a Mumbelin’ Word, Roll, Jordan, Roll, At the Beautiful
Gate.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Schirmer, 1915. Keep Me From Sinkin’ Down,
Schirmer, 1916. Mss. Collection, Fifty Negro Spirituals (Frogmore Collec¬
tion), from the South Carolina Islands.

Farwell, Arthur

Two Negro Spirituals, Wa-Wan Press, 1905: De Rocks a’ Renderin’, Moanin’.

Fisher, Wm. Arms

Don’t Be Weary, Traveler, 1919: Little Wheel a-Tumin’, 1919: Somebody’s
Knockin’, 1925, and collections, Oliver Ditson Co.

Gaul, Harvey B.

Nine Negro Spirituals, H. W. Gray, New York, 1918. South Carolina Croon
Song, Ditson, 1922. Ten Negro Spirituals, Oliver Ditson, 1923.

Guion, David W.

Darkey Spirituals, 14 numbers, M. Witmark, New York, 1918: Some o’ These
Days, Poor Sinner, Sinner, Don’ Let Dis Harvest Pass, You Jes Well Get
Ready, Little David, Satan’s a Liar an’ a Conjur’ Too, My Little Soul’
Gwine a Shine, Holy Bible, Jubilee, Hark from de Tomb, John de Bap-a-list,
I See Lawd Jesus a-Comin’, Nobody Knows, Swing Low.

Spirituals, G. Schirmer, 1918: De Old Ark’s a ’Moverin’, Greatest. Name.

Songs, Harold Flammer, Inc., 1924: L’il Black Rose, O My Lord, What Shall
I do.

Hayes, Roland

Sit Down, Ricordi, 1923.

Johnson, Hall

Numerous Mss. Choral settings, four and five parts, Mss. performances (Balti¬
more Festival Chorus, New York Choral Society, etc.) : Way Up In Heaven,

Jesus, Lay Your Head in de Window, I’ve Been ’Buked, Over Yonder, Way
Beyond the Moon.

Johnson, J. Rosamond

Spirituals in the Book of American Negro Spirituals, Viking Press, Vol. I., 1925,
Vol. II., 1926.

Larrimore, Thos. A.

Three Negro Spirituals for Men’s Voices, ^Kansas, 1924.

Manney, C.

Four Negro Spirituals, Oliver Ditson, 1922.

Mees, Arthur

Six Authentic Negro Melodies, four part Men’s Chorus, Mendelssohn Glee
Club, publishers, 1899.

Milligan, H. V.

Three Spirituals, arranged for four parts, A. P. Schmid, 1924.

Mitchell, Humphrey

Negro Spiritual, Stay in the Field, Warrior, G. Schirmer, 1918.

Newton, Ernest

Twelve Negro Spiritual Songs, F. Pittman Hart & Co., London, 1925.

Niles, John J.

Impressions of a Negro Camp Meeting, Eight Traditional Songs, Carl Fischer,
New York, 1925.

: 'BIBLIOGRAPHY

43 8

Parhan, Percy

Done Made My Vow.

Pollak, Emil J.

They Led My Lord Away, I’m Troubled in Mind.

Robinson, Avery

New Born Again, Hail the Crown, Water Boy.

Schaefer, G. A.

Songs from the South, A. P. Schmidt, New York, 1925.

Taylor, Jean

Six Negro Spirituals, H. W. Gray, New York, 1925.

Thomas, Edna

Negro Spirituals, Keith Prowse, London, 1924.

White, Clarence C.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. Cabin Memories, Four Spirituals,
Fischer, New York, 1921.

A SELECTED LIST OF MODERN MUSIC, INFLU¬
ENCED BY AMERICAN NEGRO THEMES

OR IDIOMS

Antheil, George
Jazz Sonata.

Auric, George

Adieu New York, Paris, 1922.

Burleigh, Cecil

^ Plantation Sketches for Violin and Piano, Op. 38, 1917.

Carpenter, John Alden

Krassy Kat, a Jazz Pantomime, Schirmer, 1922. Skyscrapers, A Jazz Panto¬
mime Ballet, Metropolitan Opera Season, 1926. Four Jazz Songs, 1926
Chadwick, George W.

Four Symphonic Sketches, No. 1, Jubilee, 1907. Symphony, No. 2, in b-flat,
Scherzo movement.

Chiaffarelli, Albert

Jazz Symphony based on Negro Blues, New York, 1925.

Delius, Frederick

Appalachia: Variations on Old Slave Songs for Orchestra and Chorus, Berlin
1906.

Dett, R. Nathaniel

In the Bottoms Suite, Clayton Summy Co., Chicago, 1913. Magnolia Suite
I and II, Clayton Summy Co., Chicago, 1913. Juba Dance.

Dett, R. Nathaniel

The Chariot Jubilee for Orchestra, John Church, 1922. Ramah for Violin,
Boston Music Co., 1922. Sonata in F minor on Folk Themes, Sonata in
E Minor on Folk Themes, 1925.

Diton, Carl R.

Ballade in E major, Symphony in C minor, 1st movement.

Dunn, James Philip

Overture on Negro Themes for Symphonic Orchestra, J. Fischer, 1925.

Dvorak, Anronen

From the New World, Symphony No. 5, Simrock, 1903. Quintette for Strings,

a minor, Op. 105, Simrock, 1911. Quartette for Strings, G major, Op. 106,
Simrock, 1911.

Gardner, Samuel

Jazzetta, for Violin and Piano, Carl Fischer, 1924. From the Cane Break
1924.

Gershwin, George

Rhapsody in Blue for Piano and Orchestra, Harms Co., 1924. Concerto in F

for Piano and Orchestra, 1925. 135th Street, a one-act Jazz Opera, 1925.
Gilbert, Henry F.

Dance in the Place Congo, Orchestra. Comedy Overture on Negro Themes,
H. W. Gray Co., 1915. Humoresque on Negro Themes, H. W. Gray Co ,
1913. Negro Dances, five pieces for Piano, H. W. Gray, 1914. Negro
Episode, Op. 2, No. 2, Wa-Wan Series. Three American Dances for Piano

439

440 ‘BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boston Music Co., 1915. — Uncle Remus, Delphine, Brer Rabbit, — Negro

Rhapsody, 1915.

Goldmark, Rubin
Negro Rhapsody for full Orchestra.

Gottschalk, Louis Moreau

Bamboula, Danse de Negres, W. Hall & Son, New York, 1855. La Savane,
The Banjo, New York, 1855. Le Bananier, Chanson negre, Schott, 1853.
Grainger, Percy A.

Danse Negre.

Gruenberg, Louis T.

Polychromatics, Op. 16, No. 7, 1924. Jazzberries, four dances for Piano, Op.
25, 1924. Daniel Jazz, for Voice and small Orchestra, 1925. Creation, a
Negro Sermon, for Baritone and chamber Orchestra, 1925.

Guion, David

Pickaninny Dance, Schirmer, 1922. Turkey in the Straw, for small Orchestra,
Schirmer, 1922. Jazz Scherzo for the Piano, T. Presser, 1924.

Hadley, Henry

Symphony No. 4 in D minor, “South,” third movement, 1912.

Handy, W. C.

Memphis Blues, Pace and Handy, New York, 1910. Saint Louis Blues, Pace
and Handy, New York, 1914. Aunt Hagar’s Children’s Blues, Pace and
Handy, New York, 1920.

Harling, Frank (Laurence Stallings, librettist)

Deep River, an opera — produced New York, 1926.

Hill, E. Burlinghame

Songs from Round Patch, Op. 2. Four Sketches after Stephen Crane, Op. 7,
Breitkopf & Hartel, 1900. Jazz Study for two Pianos, Schirmer, 1924.
Honneger, Arthur
Le Negre, Paris, 1924.

Jenkins, M. R. T.

Charlestonia, a Negro Rhapsody for full Orchestra. Rhapsodie Spirituelle for
Orchestra. Prelude Religieux for Organ. African War Dance.

Johnson, Hall

String Quartet in G major, four movements. Suite for String Orchestra, five
movements. Norfolk Suite for full Orchestra, five movements. Violin Sonata
in A minor. Festival March for full Orchestra. (“To the Black Soldiers
of America.”)

Kramer, A. W.

Chant Negre, Op. 32, Schirmer.

Kroeger, Ernest R.

Suite des Vaises, Kimball, St. Louis, 1885. American Characteristic Sketches,
No. 6, The Aged Negro; No. 10, Voodoo Night Scene. Humoresque Nfcgre,
No. 2, Presser, 1906.

Lane, Eastwood

The Seven Deadly Arts, a Jazz Ballet, New York, 1925.

Milhaud, Darius

Caramel Mou. Shimmy pour jazz-band. Paris, 1921. Trois rags. Caprice pour
deux piano, Paris, 1923.

Powell, John

Suite Sudiste pour Piano, Mathot, Paris, 1910. Silhouette, a Characteristic
American Suite, Fischer, 1919. Sonata Virginianesque for Violin and Piano,
Schirmer, 1919. Rhapsodie Negre for Orchestra, Schirmer, 1921. In old
Virginia, Overture for Orchestra, 1921.

Ravel, Maurice

Daphnis et Chloe — ‘2’ e Suite, Paris, 1915.

! 'BIBLIOGRAPHY

441

Satie, Eric

Parade, Paris, 1922

SCHOENFELD, HENRY

In the Sunny South, Overture. Suite Characteristique. Summy.

SCHROEDER, W.

Emperor Jones, Tone poem for Chamber Orchestra, New York, 1925.

Scott, Cyril

Danse N£gre, Op. 50, No. 5, Ricordi, 1908. Tallahassee; melodie et danse
negre pour violin et piano, Op. 73, Mainz, 1910.

Sowerby, Leo

Monotony: a Jazz Symphony, 1925. Synconata, 1926.

Still, Wm. Grant

From the Land of Dreams, for Chamber Orchestra. Levee Land, a Suite
for voice and Chamber Orchestra, International League of Composers, 1926.

Stravinski, Igor

Piano Rag Music. Ragtime, Paris, 1918.

Taylor, Deems

Plantation Love Song, Op. 6, 1920.

Taylor, S. Coleridge

Four Characteristic Vaises, Op. 22. Four African Dances, Op. 50, Augener, 1908.
Negro Love Song, Violin and Piano, Augener, 1908. Twenty-four Negro
Melodies, Transcriptions, Op. 59, Ditson. Song of Deliverance, Part Song,
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Sonatine syncopee, Eschig, Paris, 1923. Trois Blues chante, Eschig, Paris, 1924.

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Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve seen, Bandanna Sketches, Negro Lament.

Whithorne, Emerson

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Varese, Edgar

Integrates : A Study for Percussion Instruments

NEGRO FOLK LORE

Compiled by Arthur Huff Fauset
THE UNITED STATES AND THE WEST INDIES

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Allen, W. F., Negro Dialect. Nation, 1:744. 1865.

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Anderson, Izett, Jamaica Proverbs. 1910.

Backus, Emma M., Folk Tales from Georgia. Journal of American Folk Lore,
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Beyen, F. D., Maryland and Virginia, Customs of. Journal of American Folk
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Beyen, F. D., and W. W. Newell, Folk Lore, Topics for Collection of, Journal
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Blanton, Joshua E., Sea Island Folk Lore. Southern Workman. April, 1908.

Bourne, E. G., Folk Lore Publication. Recent New England, 47:165. 1887.

Bray, J. C., More Mammy Stories. New England Magazine, 45:594-606. Feb¬
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Brown, W. N., Hindu Stories in American Negro Folk Lore. Asia, 21:703-7.
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442

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Kennedy, R. Emmett, Black Cameos. A. & C. Boni, 1924.

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Parsons, Elsie Clews, Folk Lore of Elizabeth City County. Journal of American
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Parsons, Elsie Clews, Folk Lore of the Cape Verde Islanders. Journal of
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Parsons, Elsie Clews, Folk Lore from Aiken, South Carolina. Journal of
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Parsons, Elsie Clews, Folk Tales of the Sea Islands, South Carolina New
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Parsons, Elsie Clews, Tales from Guilford County, North Carolina. Journal
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Parsons, Elsie Clews, Ten Folk Tales from the Cape Verde Islands. Journal
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Pendleton, Negro Folk Lore and Witchcraft in the South. Journal of American
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Platt, J., Negro Element in the English Language. Athaneum, 2:283. 1900.

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Price, Sadie F., Kentucky, Folk Lore of. Journal of American Folk Lore, 14:30.
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The African Methodist Review, published quarterly by the A. M. R. Church.
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The Southern Workman, published monthly by Hampton Institute, Va., smce
1908. v

■BIBLIOGRAPHY

45i

II. Historical:

Bragg, Geo., Men of Maryland. Baltimore, 1925. The History of the Free
African Society, founded April 12, 1787. Baltimore, 1925.

Brawley, B. G., A Short History of the American Negro. Macmillan, 1913.

The Negro in Literature and Art. Duffield, 1918.

Cromwell, John W., The Early Negro Convention Movement. Washington,
1904. The Negro in American History. Washington, 1914.

DuBois, W. E. B., The Suppression of the Slave Trade; Haivard Historical
Studies No. 1. 1896. The Negro. Home University Library. Holt, 191$.

Ferris, William H., The African Abroad, 2 vols. Ne^'ida^n, 1913.

Lynch, John R., Facts of Reconstruction. New Yori;„

Majors, M. A., Noted Negro Women. Chicago, 1893.

Payne, Daniel A., The History of the A. M. E. Church,' Nashville, 1891.
Penn, I. Garland, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors, Springfield, 1891.
Poole, Wm. Frederick, Anti-Slavery Opjinions Before 1800. Cincinnati, 1873.
Riddell, W. R., The Slave in Canada. Washington, D. C., 1924.

Stephenson, G. T., Race Distinctions in America. New York, 1910.

Steward, Theophilus G., The Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804, or Sidelights on
the French Revolution. Crowell, N. Y., 1914. How the Black St. Domingo
Legion Saved the Patriot Army in the Siege of Savannah. Pub. American
Negro Academy No. 5. Washington, D. C., 1899. Gouldtown; a Very
Remarkable Settlement of Ancient Date. J. B. Lippincott, 1913.

Stewart, T. M., Liberia, the Americo-African Republic. New York, 1886.

Taylor, A. A., The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction. Assoc.
Pub., Washington, D. C., 1924.

Washington, Booker T., The Story of the Negro, 2 vols. Doubleday, Page,
1909.

Weatherford, W. D., The Negro from Africa to America. New York, 1923.
Williams, G. W., History of the Negro Race in America, 2 vols. New York,
1883.

Woodson, Carter G., The Negro in Our History. Washington, W. C., 1923. The
History of the Negro Church. Washington, D. C., 1922. Negro Orators and
Their Orations. Assoc. Pub., 1925. Free Negro Heads of Families from
the U. S. Census of 1830. Assoc. Pub., 1925. The Mind of the Negro As
Reflected by Letters Written During the Crisis. Assoc. Pub. 1926.

III. Race Question: International:

Beers, G. L., African Questions at the Paris Peace. Macmillan, 1923.

Blyden, Edward W., Christianity, Islam and Africa. 1888.

Brawley, B. G., Africa and the War. Duffield, N. Y., 1918.

Delafosse, Maurice, Les Noirs dans l’Afrique. Paris, 1922.

Durham, Fred. A., The Lone Star of Liberia. London, 1892.

Evans, Maurice, Black and White in South Africa. London, 1911.

Gibbons, Herbert A., The New Map of Africa. New York, 1922.

Gregory, J. W., The Menace of Color. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1925.

Harris, John H., Africa: Slave or Free. New York, 1920.

Hayford, Cayseley, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation. London,
1911.

Hayford, Caseley, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation. London,

1911. The Truth About the West African Land Question. London, 1913.
Jabavu, J. T., The Native Problem, Some of Its Points and Phases. London,

1912. The Black Problem. Lovedale, South Africa, 1921.

Johnston, Sir Harry H., Liberia. London, 1906. The Backward Peoples and

Our Relations with Them. Oxford Press, 1920.

452

: BIBLIOGRAPHY

Johnston, Sir Harry H., A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien
Races. London, 1899. The Black Man’s Part in the War. London, 1917.
Leys, Norman, Kenya. London and New York, 1925.

Loram, C. T., The Education of the South African Native, London, 1917.

Lucas, C. P., The Partition and Colonization of Africa. Oxford, 1922.

Lugard, Sir Frederick, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. London,
1923.

Mathews, Basil, The Clash of Color: A Study in the Problem of Race. Doran,

'%„• v c *9,2A.y < i\% ; woe

< MorTel, £. D., The Black Man’s Burden. London, 1920.

Nee.seH, Peter, The Black Man’s Place in South Africa. Cape Town, 1922.
iNevinscIn, H. W:, A’ Modern Slavery. Harper & Bro., 1906.

' o',OlDham, J. H., Christianity and the Race Problem. Doran, N. Y., 1924.

.Olivier,. Sir ’Sidney, The League of Nations and Primitive Peoples. Oxford, 1918.
I Plaatje,' Sol T.; Native Life in South Africa. London, 1916.

Price, Willard, The Negro Around the World. Doran, 1925.

Schoell, Frank L., La Question des Noirs aus £tats Unis. Paris, 1923.

Scholes, T. E. S., Glimpses of the Ages. London, 1905.

Shaw, Flora L. (Lady Lugard), A Tropical Dependency. London, 1905.
Speer, Robert E., Of One Blood. New York, 1924.

Stoddard, Lothrop, The Rising Tide of Color. New York, 1920.

Willoughby, W. C., Race Problems in the New Africa. London, 1923.

.... _ _ -- . -

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